How long does it take your customer to deploy a new server based business application?

As you know, I really like Hyper-V, but that’s technical. Where’s the value to our customers?

Back to my original question: “How long does it take your customer to deploy a new server based business application?”. Think about it, two or three years ago when your customer would say, how long would it take to deploy a new application to my infrastructure, you’d start with the following list of items you had to accomplish first:

1. Let’s size the hardware needed to support the new server based application?
2. Now that we know what we need, let’s get it ordered.
3. Wait a week or two until the new hardware arrives.
4. Rack the new hardware and get it physically setup to connect to the networking infrastructure.
5. Install the OS and other IT specific applications like management, monitoring, and AV.
6. Now install the new business application on the new server.

I agree that this is a simple list, it can get a lot more detailed, but you get my point. How long would this typically take? I’ve heard a number of partners tell me that it would take two weeks if you’re lucky and usually closer to a month to deploy the solution.

Let’s look at the same scenario in a well planned virtual environment:

1. How many servers are needed to support your business application?
2. Use SCVMM to leverage your standard server template to deploy these images to your Hyper-V farm. Remember:
1. SCVMM can deploy the image to your Hyper-V servers, add the machine name and even join them to the domain.
2. Your template can automatically be kept up to date with any pertinent patches between the initial creation of the template and the deployment to your Hyper-V hosts.
3. Install the new business application on your running images.

How long does it take to make all this happen in a virtual environment? The deployment of your template to your Hyper-V servers can be started right after you decide on the server requirements, and the deployment can be completed with an hour or two. Yes, I said hours not days! Of course it depends on the size of your image, but if you're using gigabit networks, even a 20 GB VM will take less than an hour to deploy to a Hyper-V server.

While we can all talk about the value of virtualization when we look at server consolidation, even in conjunction with disaster recovery, have you considered the value the agility truly gives you? Being able to deploy a business solution in a matter of days instead of weeks, may make a huge impact on on the business’ ability to quickly respond to new opportunities.

Next time you have to wait on the purchase of new hardware, ask yourself if a virtual environment could improve your agility.

Tags: Windows Server 2008 R2,Hyper-V,Business Agility,SCVMM 2008 R2