More and more companies are learning about virtualization technologies. And there are a lot of companies that have already gone from a dedicated server environment to a virtualized server setup in their data center.

Companies, IT directors, their staff and administrators are all considering the advantages and disadvantages of virtual server technology and whether it is the right choice for their company. There are many reasons to go to a virtual environment. And when going to a virtual environment a frequent question is which of our servers would benefit from being virtualized?

Email servers are great candidates for virtualization. If your organization is small then you are probably already running your email server or servers on small boxes with a certain amount of CPU, memory and disk drives. One of the parameters to look at when considering a virtual server is to ask the question: what is the current CPU utilization of my existing email server?

Typically, most data centers are running their email servers at anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of CPU utilization. If that is the case for your company, and you have other servers also running at 20 to 25 percent, or less, then you are a good candidate for an email server virtualization effort.

And what does it mean to virtualize my server? In short, a server virtualization means that we are consolidating one or more existing servers onto one physical frame or box. Each of the virtual servers gets their own allocation of virtual CPUs, memory, disk storage and I/O adapters. A combination of software and firmware performs the distribution and balancing of those resources among the virtual servers that have been defined on the physical frame or box. Usually a hypervisor is involved as a sort of traffic cop for distributing those resources.

Here are some of the many reasons to help you and your company make the decision to virtualize your email server(s):

1. The very reason why an email administrator would be interested in virtualizing their email server is because of the potential benefit to their resume. An administrator might be scratching their head at this point and be thinking “but, now I have to learn about another new technology again. It’s going to take more time away from my existing work, it’ll be time consuming and I may not even like it.” But that’s exactly why an email administrator should be looking forward to virtualizing their email servers – because most email administrators also perform system administration. And if an administrator is a good technologist already then getting to learn a new technology, such as virtualization, can turn them into a great technologist. Understanding new technologies, such as virtualization, can only add to an administrator’s resume and make them more marketable in the workplace.
2. Given that most companies are running their email servers at anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of CPU utilization and have other servers also running at 20 to 25 percent, or less, they can consolidate those physical servers onto one box running virtual servers instead. Server consolidation can result in 3 to 1 or even a 4 to 1 server reduction ratio in some cases. The result is that they can get a better server utilization of between 60 to 80 percent. This means that the physical server is not wasting resources. CPU, memory, disk drives and adapters are getting a higher percentage of usage and are thus earning their money so to speak. Why pay for resources that are only used for a small percentage of the time?
3. One of the added benefits of using fewer resources, for multiple servers, is that your licensing costs go down. Let’s say that you consolidated 4 email servers, each with 2 CPUs for a total of 8 CPUs, down to one physical box with just two CPUs – a 4 to 1 reduction ratio. That means that rather than paying for 8 CPU licenses in the dedicated server days your company is now paying for only 2 CPU licenses for your virtualized environment. This is something that an IT department can appreciate and see the value of. It also means that for an email administrator they are no longer administering four physical boxes but one physical box. This results in not only a savings of money but also time, time that is valuable to all email administrators and system administrators in general.

In my next blog post I will describe five more reasons why it makes sense to virtualize your email servers.

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