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To: pgerassi who wrote (230884)	4/21/2007 11:59:50 AM
From: dougSF30	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

The numbers I found state that 4P X86 servers grew at a 52% annual growth rate (2006 over 2005). Please show the link to those numbers.

To: pgerassi who wrote (230884)	4/21/2007 1:11:58 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Re: Most server buyers have multiple applications running on each server. And the virtualization pushes this trend further. Its far easier to maintain a few large servers than hundreds of smaller ones. Generally the case, except when you have to deal with a hardware issue, then you have a larger number of concurrently impacted users to deal with. I've been shying away from virtual servers for production (so far). Your post is going to make me do a re-evaluation. From a licensing perspective, a few large servers cost less than hundreds of smaller ones. That's not yet the case for other than Enterprise edition (and it's limited to 4 virtual servers per physical server). In fact Microsoft was charging full licensing fees for each virtual server, even if it wasn't loaded! until recently. Licenses for the upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, expected to ship later this year, will allow customers to run as many as four virtual instances on one physical server at no additional cost, extending the savings customers can realize through server consolidation on the Windows Server platform. Until recently, they charged you for virtual servers that had been "created" but were not running! "Today, if a customer has seven physical servers and a thousand images on a SAN, they would pay for 1,007 Windows licenses at install," he said. "With the new rights and model, the customer would just pay for seven licenses, and the thousand images sitting on the SAN would only require a license when they started running." eweek.com And software license costs easily trump hardware costs. That's true and getting "truer" every day! 50 10% loaded 1P servers cost 50 licenses versus 3 41% loaded 4P servers cost just 12 licenses. If you limit %CPU utilization per process, you're left with far less capable servers. If you don't, you risk a software issue on one server bringing down a bunch of independent applications. You could manually increase the "size" of the server on a virtual server to get the best of both worlds. At $5K per license per year, 38 licenses cost $190K which is higher than both the 50 1P servers or the 3 4P ones. In some cases, yes.