Security Analyst – Jeff Soehner CISSP, GXPN,GPYC,GMOB,GCIH

As some of you may already know several companies have virtual server software and have released free editions for small business to use. Windows released it’s free Hyper-V platform with windows 2008 and while Citrix has ‘Xenserver’ and give you a yearly free license, Oracle has VM Server and is free. Finally VMware releases a free license for as many servers that you wish to use. If you have a Desktop PC and want to run another OS there are quite a few free versions that can run a wide variety of systems for both PC and MAC.

Since almost everyone today has at least one server/workstation dedicated to running some type of app (directory services as in a Domain controller or just some type of collaboration service like email or calendaring) we suggest that you consider running it on a virtual server this year. There are several paid and free tools you can also use tools to migrate existing hardware based windows and RedHat/SuSE Linux servers to your new virtual servers making it easy to start saving about 70% on your hardware costs (power, air conditioning, disaster recovery, etc.)

You can learn more about the platforms from the following links or just give us a call and we will be happy to discuss the differences.

http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=683148&ntref=prod_top

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/index.html

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/why-esxi.html