Inspire Education: Server Virtualization, Risks, and Solutions Report

This report outlines the migration of Inspire Education's physical server environment to a virtualized infrastructure. It details the current storage requirements, including existing and projected usage for various servers like domain, application, database, mail, web, and file servers, along with their respective power consumption costs. The report proposes a hardware and software setup using a Dell PowerEdge R910 server, leveraging existing components to minimize costs. It also identifies potential risks associated with virtualization, such as security vulnerabilities and resource over-allocation, and suggests solutions like regular maintenance, security updates, and disaster recovery plans. The report compares Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere as virtualization software options, ultimately justifying the move to virtualization based on significant cost savings and improved operational efficiency, highlighting benefits like reduced infrastructure costs, faster server setup times, and simplified business continuity.

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[COMPANY NAME] [Company address]
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Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................1
Storage required................................................................................................................1
Infrastructure requirements – Hardware, Software, Installation and Costing.....................1
Hardware and Software setup......................................................................................................2
Costing.........................................................................................................................................2
Potential Risks...................................................................................................................3
Solutions......................................................................................................................................3
Virtualization software......................................................................................................4
Summary of Justification....................................................................................................4
Appendix...........................................................................................................................5
Email............................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
This report presents a brief description of migration of existing physical environment for
Inspire Education to a virtualized environment. As such, it will cover storage requirements,
potential risks involved, the virtualization hypervisor to be used as well as a summary for the
report.
Storage required
Current storage requirements are as follows:
Existing Servers Storage
Capacity
Current Storage
Usage
Projected Usage
Growth YoY
Years in
which the
server will run
out of Space
Domain Server 2 x 500 GB
= 1000 GB
50 GB 5 GB 190
Application
Server
2 x 500 GB
= 1000 GB
100 GB 50 GB 18
Database Server 3 x 500 GB
= 1500 GB
90 GB 90 GB 15.6
Mail Server 2 x 500 GB
= 1000 GB
150 GB 40 GB 21.25
Web Server 2 x 500 GB
= 1000 GB
80 GB 40 GB 23
File Server 3 x 500 GB
= 1500 GB
200 GB 80 GB 16.25

Power consumption:
Server Power consumption per
hour and per day
Cost Per Day
(0.3441$)
Cost Per Year
Domain Server 375 Watts x 24 = 9000 3.10$ 1,130.37$
Application Server 375 Watts x 24 = 9000 3.10$ 1,130.37$
Database Server 375 Watts x 24 = 9000 3.10$ 1,130.37$
Mail Server 375 Watts x 24 = 9000 3.10$ 1,130.37$
Web Server 375 Watts x 24 = 9000 3.10$ 1,130.37$
File Server 1100 Watts x 24 =
26400
9.085$ 3,315$
Total 8965.75$
Infrastructure requirements – Hardware, Software, Installation and Costing
Hardware and Software setup
Server Type of Server Specification
Dell PowerEdge R910
2 x 8 Core XEON Processors
128GB DDR3 Ram
1 x 1100W Power Supply
(Dell, 2020)
15 hot-plug 2.5” SATA (15 x
500) = 7500GB
Operating System: Windows
Server 2016 Datacenter
File Server 6 Cores
64 GB Ram
1500 GB Storage Block
Free Storage: 1300 GB
Time to Exhaust: 16.25
Years
Web Server 4 Cores
32 GB Ram
2 x 500 GB Storage Block

Edition Free Storage: 920 GB
Time to Exhaust: 23
Years
Domain Server 2 Cores
8 GB Ram
2 x 500 GB = 1000 GB
Storage Block
Free Storage: 950 GB
Time to Exhaust: 190
Years
Application Server 2 Cores
8 GB Ram
2 x 500 GB = 1000 GB
Storage Block
Free Storage: 900 GB
Time to Exhaust: 18
Years
Database Server 2 Cores
3 x 500 GB = 1500 GB
Storage Block
Free Storage: 1410 GB
Time to Exhaust: 15.6
Years
Mail Server 2 Cores
2 x 500 GB = 1000 GB

Storage Block
Free Storage: 1350 GB
Time to Exhaust: 21.25
Years
Costing
Most of the components of the existing Dell PowerEdge R90 would be retained and all other
servers would be discarded. However, this doesn’t mean that even their components would
also be discarded. Instead, their components such as the Ram and the storage drives would be
used in the Dell PowerEdge R910 server.
This makes the effective cost of the new server being implemented in the business is as
follows:
Hardware and Software Cost
Dell PowerEdge R910 Bareshell 890
Additional Ram N/A
Additional Storage N/A
Additional Power supply N/A
Additional networking components N/A
Windows Datacenter 2016 N/A
Now, the electricity consumption in comparison with the earlier system is as follows:
Setup Servers Annual Cost
Old Server Setup Domain Server +
Application Server +
Database Server + Mail
Server + Web Server +
8965.75$

File Server
New Server Setup 1 Main Server running 6
Virtual Machines at a
power capacity of 1100W
@0.3441$ per day
3315.75$
This translates to about 5,650$ of annual electricity consumption savings effectively.
Potential Risks
 Internet traffic traversing through virtual networks could typically not be visible to
traditional security detection measures being used in the organization (Song, 2014).
 At the same time, unauthorized access to hypervisor can lead to unprecedented
problems even on the physical machines as much as the virtual machines (Luo et al.,
2014).
 Some inappropriate authorization access and misuse of privileges can lead to potential
security holes by the administration team (Banushri and R. A. Karthika, 2018).
 A virtual machine running on the physical server may get over-allocated and consume
high amount of CPU cycles and other resources overwhelming the underlying
hardware and thereby restricting the other machines in computational, memory,
storage or network-based operations.
 All the servers are now in virtual machines which is hosted on a single physical
machine. If the machine is compromised physically or in any other way, it translates
into a huge risk for the entire operation of the company (Ibrahim Turki, Hasan Zwiad
and M. Almuttairi, 2019).

Solutions
 Regular physical maintenance combined with appropriate cooling system and
physical safeguards must be present for the physical machine.
 The hypervisor along with the operating system and the individual servers must be
regular patched with latest security updates and hotfixes.
 All the servers must be hardened against best industry practices.
 A disaster recovery and backup plan must be in place and the backup itself for all
individual servers must be stored off-site.
 Additional security measures such as firewall, antivirus solutions, intrusion detection
systems and hardware firewall must be employed to protect against cyber breaches.
Virtualization software
The two key competitors in modern corporate datacenter environment are Microsoft Hyper-V
as well as VMware vSphere hypervisors. The ESXi hypervisor by VMware would be the
virtualization hypervisor developed by VMware operating on the bare metal disk. There are
many varying vSphere options readily available, based on operational requirements. vSphere
Standard, Enterprise Plus as well as Operations Management, providing different capabilities
and rates of fault tolerance (Kurniawan et al., 2018). The many different variants available of
the vSphere allows companies to choose the best available service for their requirements and
development objectives. By comparison, Microsoft Hyper-V is designed to provide
"enterprise-class virtualization" either for data center or otherwise hybrid cloud enterprises
(scooley, 2018). For companies that choose to virtualize heavy workloads, it helps to create a
private cloud, scale infrastructure across a public cloud or incorporate all three, this

alternative is a popular choice. For every update of the Windows Server platform Microsoft
continues to improve the Hyper-V platform.
VSphere Pros
 User friendly operation
 High-quality service flexibility
 Provides solutions to governance applications
 Wide OS support
 Provides higher guests OS per host compared to Hyper-V (512 vs. 384)
vSphere Cons
 Vendor Lock-in
 Not as wide ecosystem in the enterprise world as Microsoft
 Utilizes a 3rd party cloud infrastructure by AWS
Hyper-V Pros
 Easy and quicker in deploying new virtual machines
 Maintenance does not cost any downtime
 Easier backup solution
 Lower priced in comparison
Hyper-V Cons
 Not as widely accepted as vSphere
 Lesser number of Guest OS in comparison
 Needs Windows OS upgrades

Summary of Justification
The important takeaway from the report is essentially the fact that Virtualization can help
save the company significant monetary resources. Not only is Virtualization and cloud
computing the future of enterprise computing along with cost savings, it also provides
additional benefits. The main benefits include cost of the setup as virtualization cuts down on
the infrastructure cost. Also, the server setup time also is cut down drastically. It simplifies
business continuity and disaster planning. Increases uptime and makes managing servers
simple. As a result, the move to the virtualization would be beneficial to the company.
References

Banushri, A. and R. A. Karthika, D. (2018). Implementation levels of virtualization and
security issues in cloud computing. International Journal of Engineering & Technology,
7(3.3), p.678.
Dell. (2020). Dell PowerEdge R910 Rack Server | Dell Bermuda. [online] Available at:
https://www.dell.com/bm/business/p/poweredge-r910/pd [Accessed 2 Apr. 2020].
Ibrahim Turki, A., Hasan Zwiad, A. and M. Almuttairi, R. (2019). Security Issues, Attacks
and Vulnerabilities for Virtualization in Cloud Computing and their Solutions. Journal of
Engineering and Applied Sciences, 14(6), pp.9509–9518.
Kurniawan, D.E., Nashrullah, M., Kurniasih, N., Achmad Daengs, G. and Kurniawan, C.
(2018). Performance analysis virtual server VMware Vsphere 5.5 with physical enterprise
server. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 420, p.012107.
Luo, X., Yang, L., Hao, D., Liu, F. and Wang, D. (2014). On Data and Virtualization Security
Risks and Solutions of Cloud Computing. Journal of Networks, 9(3).
Salih, B. (2016). Comparison between Virtualization and Cloud Computing. International
Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), 5(6), pp.195–199.
scooley (2018). Introduction to Hyper-V on Windows 10. [online] Microsoft.com. Available
at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/about/.
Song, M.H. (2014). Analysis of Risks for Virtualization Technology. Applied Mechanics and
Materials, 539, pp.374–377.

Appendix
Email
From
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Server upgradation for Inspire Education
Attachment: Server implementation documentation.pdf
Hi John,
I am thankful to your organization for giving me this opportunity to serve you. As you may
be aware, to improve operational efficiency and achieve cost savings, the organization has
decided to move to the Virtualization environment from a pre-dominant physical
environment. Accordingly, I’ve prepared an implementation plan along with the technical
specifications which is attached herewith in the email. Specifically, it will address the storage
requirements, the potential risks of this move to the virtualization environment, the
virtualization software that we are considering and a brief about the consolidation of the
existing infrastructure in a virtual infrastructure.
Please note that, while the transition to Virtualized environment would happen smoothly, the
existing services would be disrupted for a tune of 6 hours on the day of migration.
Let me know if you’ve any queries or concerns.
Regards