Is your business is growing or your server hardware is aging?
You’re thinking of upgrading but don’t quite know which route to go down?
Server 2016 with Hyper-V could be the answer for you.
So what’s new in Server 2016?
So apart from the swish new looks of Windows 10, Server 2016 comes packed with some pretty awesome new features. We won’t detail them all but the ones relevant to this topic should suffice.
Host Guardian Service – Enables VM’s to be protected from unauthorized access, even from Hyper-V admins. It also allows you encrypt VM’s via BitLocker, so if you’re sharing a server with another business you can be sure that they won’t be able to see any of your critical company data.
Nano Server – Boasting a 92 percent smaller installation footprint than the standard edition. Cut down OS means for far fewer updates meaning less reboots and less downtime. Much smaller attack surface due to the reduced number of services running.
What is Hyper-V?
Server virtualization isn’t anything new. It’s been around since Server 2008 and has been an ever growing way of getting more bang for buck out of your physical server hardware. In essence it’s a basic Windows Server installation on a single physical server that gives you the capability of creating multiple virtual machines or VM’s to service your network needs.
So how is this different to my current setup?
Well you’ll more than likely have a physical piece of equipment for each of the network roles your business requires. So your domain and emails will be on one server, terminal services for remote users on another, VOIP Phone system on another piece of hardware and so on.
With Hyper-V you have a single piece of functional hardware and everything runs from. It not only saves on space, power costs and general noise but the initial outlay to replace the entire infrastructure is much, much lower.
How is this possible?
Licensing for a start. With each version of Server 2016 Standard you purchase you have the rights to create an additional 2 VM’s as well licensing the original server. So in reality you’re getting 3 systems authorized with Microsoft instead of the single 1 that you’d get with each physical server.
This allows you to have a domain controller, terminal server and phone system all in the same place.
Hardware layout costs are much reduced too, it’s much cheaper to buy a single server with 64GB of RAM, 2 processors and a RAID controller than 2 servers with 32GB of RAM and a single Xeon each. The VM’s then share the resources allowing you to maximize and economise your network to the exact specifications you need.
What are the downsides?
For the vast majority of businesses there is no downside, but it could be said that putting all your eggs in one basket could be a bad thing (the quality of the basket is important too). Maintenance of the physical server will result in downtime for all the machines which run within it. So setup and planning is important.
If you need any advice or would like to have a chat about how Hyper-V might be able to improve your business give us a call! 0845 519 4425