Introducing CIT’s Unix Virtual Server Service

The Center for Information Technology (CIT) is pleased to announce a new Unix virtual server hosting service using VMWare software.

What is server virtualization?

Server virtualization allows multiple operating system instances to access resources from a pool of physical servers, providing access to the memory and processors of that pool of servers. Each operating system runs in isolation, side-by-side on the same physical machine. VMWare acts as the intermediary between the virtual server’s operating system and the hardware, allowing the customer to receive a service similar to a dedicated server, even though multiple “virtual systems” are running on the same server.

Virtualization: a lower-cost solution

Compared to standard dedicated servers, virtualization offers customers cost savings because it maximizes the efficient use of pooled resources.

• Virtualization decreases the number of administered physical servers, which reduces overall power and cooling requirements.


• Operational savings result in a lower charge for CIT customers. Virtual server customers pay about 25 percent less than those with dedicated servers.


• CIT's virtualized environment is highly robust with built-in redundancy. Customer configurations that require additional servers and load balancers for failover support can leverage the virtualized environment to significantly lower their hardware requirements and costs.

Why should I choose virtualization?

Along with the cost savings mentioned above, virtualization offers additional operational benefits and provides a high quality production environment.

Operational Benefits

Faster and More Flexible Provisioning: Virtualization expedites the server provisioning process.

• Virtual servers can be rapidly deployed through the use of preconfigured master images.


• Virtualization's flexibility makes it easier to set up additional virtual servers quickly.


• Additional test or development servers to validate system changes can be deployed according to customer needs.

Decreased Downtime: Virtualization allows servers to remain accessible during scheduled maintenance or physical server failure.

• During scheduled maintenance, such as hardware replacements, firmware upgrades, and network changes, virtual machines can be non-disruptively moved to other servers in the server pool, thereby allowing maintenance without downtime.


• In the event of a physical server failure, virtual machines automatically failover to other remaining servers in the pool. This failover with redundancy allows the customer's virtual server to remain accessible.


• The technology provides additional options for future disaster recovery and business continuity solutions.

Higher Capacity Utilization: Virtualization enables customers to effectively respond to fluctuations in the workload and adjust capacity as needed.

• Virtual machines can be moved from one physical server to another for workload distribution and improved performance.


• Capacity can be expanded and additional hardware can be added into the server pool without impacting the existing customers' virtual machines.

A High Quality Production Environment

Secure and Robust Systems: Virtualization maximizes uptime of business critical systems and minimizes service interruptions.

• Virtualized machines run in an environment completely isolated from the host machine and other virtual machines.


• Data does not leak across virtual machines, and applications can only communicate over configured network connections.


• A virtual system offers continuity because it absorbs the failure of one virtual machine with no effect on the others in the system.

CIT’s standard hosting service: Customers using virtualization receive the same premium service that the NIH Data Center offers its customers with physical servers.

• Virtualization provides the customer with a reliable service identical to a dedicated server, without the complexity of shared servers.


• Other standard services include:
  1. Full technical support including full server support, 24 x 7 system monitoring and problem resolution.
  2. Software upgrades, hardware maintenance, and backup and recovery services
  3. Comprehensive change management.
  4. Security validated by a yearly SAS70 audit.

CIT’s Unix Virtual Server standard offering

CIT’s Unix Virtual Server offering provides a Solaris x86 environment running on a VMWare virtual server. The standard virtual server includes 2 GB of memory and 50 GB of storage. In addition to this basic offering, CIT can customize the virtual server to meet your requirements. Because virtual servers have access to resources from a pool of servers, customers can request more memory (in 1G increments), and more data storage (in 25GB increments). The CIT hosting staff provides the same operating system support, patching, security, backup, and monitoring as it does for the dedicated hardware solution. The initial offering does not include support for virtual servers that must reside behind application firewalls or load balancers, but there are plans to include that support in the future.

The virtualized Solaris environment resides on pools of servers running under VMWare ESX software. The server pools consist of four to five servers, each with dual or quad core processors and up to 128 GB of memory with room for expansion. The server pools are connected to a 10 TB SAN that can be expanded to accommodate storage growth. For pricing information regarding these services, please check the CIT Rates page (http://datacenter.cit.nih.gov/rates/).

More information

For more information about the service, please contact the Help Desk at http://ithelpdesk.nih.gov or by phone at 301-496-4357, 301-496-8294 (TTY) or toll free at 866-319-4357 (toll free).

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