Five years ago, most accounting firm partners would probably have stared blankly if you asked them about server virtualization and virtual machines. But now many are adopting server virtualization as a way of reclaiming space and improving hardware performance, even if they don't always understand the technology "It's been everything we hoped for and more," says CPA David Cieslak, a principal with reselling firm Arxis Technology of Simi Valley, Calif.CPA Tom Davis a partner with BowenPhillips, who provides consulting services to many other accounting firms, says he sees many clients moving to server virtualization. "I am working with a lot of firms doing it," he says. His own Valdosta, Ga.-based business hasn't installed such a system yet. But the IT staff has been pushing for it and the move has been budgeted for this year.
Clive Grimbleby, president of Grimbleby, Coleman of Modesto, Calif., doesn't know all the technical details of his firm's adoption of virtualization. But he has no doubt about the results. "From a financial standpoint it's wonderful, it's a lot less expense," he says. "It's faster, less headaches, and we are not looking for physical locations to put more servers into a small space."
For those who aren't comfortable with term "virtual machines", the concept is fairly simple, even when the technology is not. Computer processors are segmented so each can function as a separate computer, a virtual machine, within the same computer chassis. How many depends on the chip. Because they are completely independent of each other, each Virtual Machine can run a different operating system. So one chip could have different VMs running Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
Or, more appropriately for most accounting offices, they could be running different applications. The rule was once, one application, one server, so that a firm would have its tax preparation system in one box, practice management in another and accounting in a third. The problem was these systems often didn't utilize much of the server, so firms were paying for a lot of capacity that wasn't getting used.
Some indication of the market acceptance of virtualization is the performance of market-leader VMware for the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue from the United States for the second quarter was $334 million, up 43 percent from the prior year. International revenue grew to $340 million, up 53 percent for the same year. The other major player is the always formidable Microsoft with Windows Server 2008, server virtualization using Hyper-V technology and the standalone Hyper V Server.
Besides reducing the footprint of the servers, adopting virtualization should enable BowenPhillips to buy more robust servers, instead of purchasing units with less horsepower to run applications separately to save money on the number of computers.
"You can buy a very beefy box, instead of having to buy three or four moderately beefy boxes, all operating at 40 percent at capacity," Davis says. And the result of having individual servers for separate applications was the firm ended up overbuilding its hardware population.
Davis was concerned about having multiple applications on the same piece of hardware. The IT staff noted there would be mirrored systems. Davis recalls that the tech personnel argued, "We can put in redundant power supplies. We can put in an extra cooling and when was the last time we had a server failure?"
BowenPhillips will probably make the switch in December, going from four or five servers down to one. And end users will probably not notice that anything has changed.
Different applications "will be running on separate boxes one day and the next day they will be running on one server," he says.
For Grimbleby, who is working to install FirmWorks from Davis' company, Knowledge Concepts, virtualization made it simple when Davis told him the practice management package would require installation of another server. Grimbleby was able to respond, "No problem, we'll just create another one" instead of having to shop for a new piece of hardware.
Cieslak says Arxis found VMware "is absolutely the better way to go as opposed to the Microsoft. You can load balance or you can auto load balance and it will move things around for you. It's just wicked. They have it down to a very slick science," he says.
