Further, many applications don’t play well together. You may have a powerful, multi-processor server, but if you try to run several disparate applications on it, even applications that in themselves have a small footprint or light requirements, and you’re likely to bring the server to a crawl, if it will run at all. So you run those applications on separate pieces of hardware, sized — as closely as feasible — to the application’s need.

The problem is that low-end servers can cost just as much to maintain, if not more, than their high-end counterparts. Operating systems must still be patched, backups must still be performed, anti-virus and other security measures must still be maintained. And if a hard drive on a PC fails? There’s usually no redundancy in place to keep the system up and running while you replace the drive. So you have to rebuild the system and restore from backup, which takes time and costs money.

What if you could combine all those low-end servers into one high-end system, letting them share processors, memory, disk, and network, while keeping them separated so they don’t interfere with one another? You can! It’s called “virtualization.”

What is Virtualization?

A virtual server looks and acts like a regular server, but without its own hardware. Instead it shares all physical resources with other virtual servers on a physical host. For example, suppose you have a host server with 8 processors, 12 GB of memory, and a terabyte of disk. The host would run its own operating system, depending on what virtualization software you use. (We’ll discuss those options in a moment.) Residing inside that system you could have several other servers — guests — each with its own operating system, each accessing its own portion of the hardware.

On some virtualization schemes, each guest system is allocated a specific processor, specific network cards, etc. Thus, on a 4 CPU host system, you could run at most 3 guests, with one CPU reserved for the host. This is similar to many partitioning systems.

A more flexible arrangement pools the resources of the host and presents virtual processors to the virtual servers. So, on a 4 processor host you could run a dozen or more guests. The host may have only one or two network cards, but each guest would see its own private connection to the LAN.

The benefits of virtualization are obvious: A single high-end host can support multiple low-end guests. A secondary server that may not warrant redundancy on its own can still have it by sharing it with other secondary servers. If a hard drive on the host server fails, the guests can continue to run while you replace it. If you add a second network card to the host, all of the guests on that host can benefit from the additional bandwidth.

What are the Options?

Perhaps the most popular virtualization vendor today is VMware, recently acquired by EMC. They offer several flavors of their products, including a workstation version tailored for developers who need to run multiple configurations on their local systems; a mid-range version (GSX) that runs atop a Windows or Linux host and can support up to 4 guests on each CPU, on a platform with up to 8 CPU’s; and a high-end version (ESX) that installs its own host operating system on hardware with up to 16 CPU’s, supporting up to 8 hosts per CPU.

Using VMware Workstation, an IT administrator could develop and test the configuration of a server in an isolated environment, and when he was sure it was ready, deploy it to a VMware GSX or ESX host. It’s also possible to pre-build server images so that a complete and functioning server can be brought online in a matter of minutes.

Using VMware, many large organizations have been able to reduce the number of physical servers they maintain from hundreds to tens, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Microsoft has recently entered the market with its own Virtual Server 2005 in Standard Edition (up to 4 processors) and Enterprise Edition (up to 32 processors.) Officially, MS Virtual Server 2005 currently only supports other versions of Windows, although they claim they’ll soon be able to support various x86-based Linux distributions.

Too Good?

One of the problems with the virtualization systems we’ve discussed is that they make deploying new servers too easy. It used to be that end-users would have to build a solid business case for the purchase of a new server because it required such a significant investment in hardware and labor from IT. Now, with tools like VMware and MS Virtual Server, new servers can be switched on almost as quickly and easily as turning on a light bulb, with no additional investment in hardware. Of course, that new server still requires administration: licensing, security, patching, backup, and everything else required of a physical server.

With discipline, planning, and careful procedures, virtual servers may have a very real place in your business.

Today, virtual operating systems from companies such as Microsoft, VMware, SWsoft and XenSource allow companies of all size to take advantage of hardware that would have made yesterday’s IT managers salivate in envy. Multicore processors, inexpensive system memory and commodity-priced massive disk drives are putting the disk farms and mainframes of years ago into a small chassis. The result: technology that once was the province of multinational companies can now be used by small- and mid-sized businesses as well — assuming they have the technological wherewithal to implement these capabilities.

For example, instead of being confined to a single operating system on each physical computer, companies can leverage virtual server technology to deploy multiple environments on the same box. Companies can use virtual servers to eliminate costs of managing and upgrading legacy hardware by migrating older applications onto virtual machines running on new, reliable hardware. They can also consolidate low-use departmental servers onto a single physical server to decrease management complexity.

In order for an SMB to take advantage of virtualization, there are several technological issues that need to be understood and exploited. Once harnessed, a world of opportunity exits.

Deploying a Server: Migration from physical to virtual, virtual to physical, virtual to virtual and physical to physical.
Hardware and Software Support: Support for multiple hardware platforms and operating systems, including both 32- and 64-bit servers as well as VMware, Microsoft, XenSource and Parallels virtual environments.
Customizing the Migration Process: Migrate an entire system or specific files to another server.
Working with Data: Migrating either live data or data at rest with either an on-line or off-line migration with minimal disruption.
Disaster Recovery: Take a backup image and migrate that to a new server for historic data retrieval purposes.
Sounds impossible for an SMB with only limited IT capabilities? It isn’t. It really is based on the axiom: Use the right tool for the job.

Deploying a Server
In an SMB, deploying a server generally requires building the system from scratch, including installing the operating system and applications, configuring the applications and then configuring the network. This is a time- and personnel-intensive task. Depending on the server being built, it could take literally days to build, test, configure, test, debug, test and deploy. Then, when you build another system, you start all over.

It would be a lot more efficient to build a single system, and then deploy it again and again. In a virtual environment, this could mean designing a system in the IT lab and then deploying it to virtual servers at a hosting company or to remote systems. But how do you ensure that the system you built in one location actually works in another?

The key here is to create “transportable images”. A transportable image is one that can be designed and tested on one hardware platform, then deployed on another, regardless of the hardware configuration. The benefits of transportable images are reduced configuration time, reduced deployment time, and the ability to deploy even without necessarily knowing at the outset the hardware configuration.

The drawback: not every deployment tool supports transportable images. The key is to select an imaging program that will not only allow you to move from a physical to a virtual machine, but also from virtual to virtual, virtual back to physical and physical to physical — think of it as going full circle.

Hardware and Software Support
This is fairly straightforward, but certainly worth mentioning. Many IT infrastructures are purchasing hardware and software that support 64-bit technology. While you might not be using 64-bit hardware or applications today, make sure your servers are capable of moving to that platform in the future. You don’t want to have to redevelop all of your servers again in three to five years.

Additionally, make sure you have tools that allow you to move from one virtual operating system to another. With mergers, acquisitions and new applications, you don’t want to be locked in to a single platform. Having the right tools to move from one virtual OS to another is imperative.

Customizing the Migration Process
There likely will be occasions when you will need to migrate just part of a virtual server to another system. To ensure that you can successfully move a group of folders or files, you need to have a tool that is able to drag and drop the files from one system to another. It sounds easy, but again, not every migration tool can perform this function.

Working with Live Data
Most migration tools do an excellent job of moving data that is at rest — data that is not currently being used. In fact, much of the time you will be dealing with data that is off-line. However, when you are backing up a server that must be up 24×7 or restoring a transactional server, you’re dealing with live data.

In such cases, you’ll want to be able to image the live data when making the backup so that the backup operation will not impact the server or your users. Select a disk imaging application that can take a snapshot of the server and then perform the backup operation in the background.

You only have two choices with imaging products: those that force you to take a server down to back up, which can cause massive interruptions to your business processes and productivity, or those that allow you to back up live data completely in the background on a live, running Windows system with open system files. Only programs that can image open Windows files will allow you to save the state of that machine; when you restore that image, the system will be back working in a known, good condition.

Here’s an important caution: If your program does not back up open Windows files, you will not be able to restore the image to a bare-metal drive effectively. You will first have to reinstall the operating system, then all applications, drivers and such. Your backup will be file-based only.

Disaster Recovery
Disasters come in all sizes. Companies need to plan for the recovery of systems first by prioritizing resources and creating backup schedules to match the maximum allowable downtime for any given server. Remember that creating a system backup is not the end of the task, it’s the beginning. Ensuring that the backup can be restored is a goal that must be achieved but remember, to be useful, that backup must be able to be restored to any hardware platform, not just the system from which it was created.

Disk imaging offers the best choice for disaster recovery because it can return a system to a known, good working state. However, as noted earlier, make sure that you select an imaging product that can work entirely in the background or you will find yourself with potentially damaging productivity issues.

File-based backups require that you reinstall the operating system, applications, drivers and such, then reconfigure the system to meet your needs.

There are a number of quality disk imaging products available today. You can test each one by creating a live image from one system and restoring it to another hardware platform. (To make things comparable, be sure to use x86 platforms running a version of Windows.) It does not matter if the systems are Intel- or AMD-based; in fact, going from one architecture to the other is a good way to test the software. If you cannot restore an image from one hardware platform to another, chances are you don’t want that product; it likely will cause more grief than it’s worth.

If an SMB’s data protection solution does not address the complete lifecycle management of data, the company risks unacceptable exposure of its data that can easily result in the loss of data and costly downtime. Policies, procedures and having the right tools to do the job sometimes just aren’t enough. SMBs, just like their corporate competitors, need to test their disaster recovery plan to ensure that they know how to recover. Having the right IT products is just the first step; practice and experience round out a fully functional disaster recovery plan.

Why is Paragon’s Drive Backup 9.0 the right choice for your SMB?
Our industry leading backup technology:
Disk imaging and file-based backups - easily create an exact Windows server disk image, including the operating system, databases and applications enabling easy migration of your systems among servers. Due to Paragon’s Hot Backup technology and Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (MS VSS) technology, all of your applications remain online during your workstation’s backup. Drive Backup performs hot backup and protects your system without interrupting your work process.

NEW! Exclude files from backups - capture only necessary business data and save storage archive space.

NEW! Smart Backup options and automation - differential backups to decrease the number of backups you manage; Scheduling and Cyclic backup options to “set it and forget it”. Included our advanced script Generator which can automate any routine operations from hard disk imaging to simple disk partitioning.

Our focus on disaster recovery:
Bare-metal disaster recovery in minutes after any unforeseen event. Drive Backup delivers incredibly fast server restoration, even from a bare-metal state. You can browse backup images and restore individual files and folders, hard disk partitions and/or entire hard disks.

NEW! Paragon Adaptive Restore- a special technology that enables to successfully recover Windows Vista, XP, 2003 Server and 2008 Server to a different hardware configuration. If you need to replace failed hardware and cannot find an exact match for your original system specifications, this feature will help you out. Besides you can even restore a backup image of your real system to a virtual one and vice versa.

Powerful Recovery Media - our comprehensive bootable recovery CD is included to access backup images locally or via the network. You can also create custom bootable recovery media containing HDD backup images.

Our hardware and software flexibility:
Wide range of software and hardware RAID support, Windows x64 support, Windows dynamic volumes support, IDE, SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire hard drives support, local or network backup media support as well as built-in CD/DVD Burner to place backup images on CD/DVD. This product delivers great flexibility to IT professionals and system administrators.

Our reliable technology:
Paragon’s Disk Imaging, File-level backup and Powerful Recovery Technologies are used by millions of satisfied customers.
SMBs without the IT budget of a large enterprise, or even a dedicated IT staff still have the same fundamental data protection needs as large businesses. Our special Value Pack and Technician License address your SMB data protection needs regardless of network size or architecture.