HERNDON, Va., Aug. 14, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Homes & Land Magazine, the most popular and widely read real estate listings publication in the U.S. and Canada, has deployed SWsoft's operating system virtualization software, Virtuozzo, to increase server utilization and redundancy in its corporate data center, while significantly reducing costs.
"Virtuozzo has allowed us to get more use from our server farm and stretch our hardware dollars," said Robert Berry, director of technical services for the publisher. "Before deploying Virtuozzo, we noticed that the CPU utilization on each physical server was negligible. When we added Virtuozzo software to a couple of physical machines, we were able to add multiple virtual web servers to a single physical machine and easily achieve higher CPU utilization."
Homes & Land has 13 Virtuozzo hardware nodes running Windows Server 2003, with a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Because of the ability to densely populate multiple virtual environments onto a single server, the company believes it can increase utilization even further.
"We are nowhere near the completion of our deployment of Virtuozzo," said Berry. "Because of Virtuozzo's high density capabilities, many of our hardware nodes could easily handle many more virtual environments."
Homes & Land has configured the Virtuozzo virtual environments so that web servers are mirrored across different hardware, thereby providing failover redundancy and making migrations and upgrades easier to manage.
"We had an unexpected result from our Cold Fusion application servers. By increasing the number of instances of Cold Fusion, we improved response times, thereby serving pages faster even though we were putting more load on the CPUs," said Berry.
With 12 web servers spread across four physical machines, the company has saved more than $80,000 on hardware alone, compared with if it had deployed individual physical servers. Savings on space, cooling, and management further add to the ROI (return-on-investment) associated with Virtuozzo.
SWsoft Virtuozzo dynamically partitions a single Windows or Linux operating system instance into highly efficient and scalable virtual environments. Virtuozzo includes patented technology that enables density of up to hundreds of virtual environments per physical server.
Unlike virtual machines and hypervisors, Virtuozzo addresses the challenges of operating system sprawl faced by today's data centers. Its unique architecture and management tools make Virtuozzo the ideal solution for provisioning, monitoring and managing virtualized server resources.
About SWsoft
SWsoft is a global leader in virtualization and automation software that helps consumers, businesses, and service providers optimize their use of technology. The company's software powers more than 130,000 servers and 600,000 desktops worldwide. The SWsoft product line includes Virtuozzo - the leading operating system virtualization solution, Parallels - the leading desktop virtualization product, and Plesk - the leading server control panel. Founded in 1999, the company has offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.swsoft.com.