HVAC company utilizes VMware for consolidation of infrastructure

A 100+ user HVAC fabrication and roofing services provider, had 2 server rooms, and was experiencing server creep where the number of servers in their environment had multiplied by a factor of 3 between 2000 and 2008. Due to some budget constraints and a perceived need to place each new application or service on a separate box many of the systems in place were non-redundant entry level boxes even though they could be running mission critical apps. Servers well over the 4-5 year expected useable lifetime was an additional concern.

Also in the environment were several dozen workstations used as terminals for a HVAC management and control application that allows remote management of the environmental controls at client locations. While appearing inexpensive, these large tower workstations were occupying a second server room of their own.

VMware ESX Infrastructure 3.5 was proposed as a part of an overall IT/Server Room redesign. VMware would be employed in the environment for both Production and a separate isolated Test and Development environment. Flexible shared storage was provided to the Production environment via an iSCSI Storage Array to enable the High Availability and VM migration features of VMware.

Once the project was complete, the client had reduced their server rooms to one, their physical servers by 35%, achieved a 7 to 1 virtualization ratio in production with plenty of capacity to deploy at 15 to 1, and a fully virtualized copy of their production environment for test and development. Downtime has also been reduced and the maintenance window for the virtual infrastructure has moved from after-hours to business hours.

The HVAC provider is now upgrading their virtual infrastructure to VMware vSphere 4.0 and planning an expansion of their physical capacity by 1 server to accommodate a further virtualization of their physical infrastructure and reduce the number of physical boxes in their environment even further.