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RUN YOUR BUSINESS,
NOT YOUR IT

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I NEED TO RUN MY OWN APPLICATION OR CUSTOM CONFIGURATION OF SOFTWARE - SHOULD I RUN A VIRTUAL MACHINE OR A REAL DEDICATED SERVER?

It depends. If you have an application which requires a high-level of performance which will keep a real server busy—or possibly an application or application set which requires multiple servers and they will all be relatively busy—then owning your own physical servers and infrastructure may be most appropriate for you, especially if you are able to plan and scale your implementation correctly over a longer period of time. This may apply to large and very busy and interactive web sites, or complex and heavily-used business IT systems.

But for many people—even those who need multiple servers to run different applications or services on, such as web sites or databases or email servers—the average server tends to spend much of it’s life idling or running relatively low workloads. Very few modern servers actually run at a high CPU utilisation. Using a virtualisation solution allows you to benefit from maximising server resources efficiently.

WHY SHOULD I USE A HOSTED VM SERVICE?

Using a service such as BTA Virtual Machine hosting means that not only can you save costs and expenditure because your server still shares a level of physical resources with other Virtual Machines, you also gain the ability to scale up or scale down or even cease your service whenever you need to as well, providing your business with flexibility as its needs evolve and change over time, as opposed to being stuck with physical hardware and long-term capital outlay and hosting overheads.

Using a hosted VM service also provides additional protection against hardware failure without incurring yet more expenditure. Implementing protection for hardware failure can potentially add significant cost and infrastructure overheads to a physical server solution - typically requiring you to purchase extra server hardware or entire servers. Meanwhile, if you have just one physical server your application or service is susceptible to machine failure whilst the cost and overhead of adding more physical servers may not be justified in a business context. A hosted Virtual Machine immediately benefits from the ability to be migrated ‘live’, whilst running, to another physical host in the underlying server pool without any down time, providing resiliency from individual server hardware failure. This comes standard and at no cost with a VM hosting solution, but not if you own your own server.

WHAT ARE THE MINIMUM TERMS OF SERVICE FOR BTA VIRTUAL MACHINE HOSTING ?

Our minimum term of service is just one month. There are no long tie-ins. You can add and change and cease Virtual Machines to fit your business needs. We just ask that for ceasing a VM (or all your VM’s) you give us at least 30 days notice.

WHAT VIRTUALISATION PLATFORM DO YOU USE?

The BTA VM hosting and virtualisation platform is powered by Citrix Xenserver Enterprise. Unlike other virtualization products that are built on closed proprietary systems, XenServer is based on the open source Xen hypervisor, an exceptionally lean technology that delivers low overhead and near-native performance. Leveraging both Intel VT platforms and AMD Virtualization (AMD-V™) platforms for hardware assisted virtualization, XenServer delivers faster, more efficient virtualization computing.

Building on a long list of proven enterprise-class features such as live migration ("XenMotion"), resource pooling and workload provisioning, the newest version of XenServer includes advances in high availability (HA) and disaster recovery with auto-restart and failover technologies. XenServer also provides a unique management architecture that eliminates single points of failure.

On the hardware front, we use HP Proliant DL-class servers running multiple Intel Xeon quad-core processors and full redundancy features (secondary power supplies, fan units, etc). These servers are backed by HP storage arrays. Network infrastructure is provided by high-performance Cisco wire-speed gigabit switches and Juniper firewall and security systems. (Even though virtualisation allows you to decouple the virtual servers from the hardware so that you can swap and replace hardware at will, for maximum reliability we do not use any no-brand or cheap hardware in the platform.)

Each physical host server belongs to a server “resource pool” which shares storage and thus allows VM's to be migrated live ("XenMotion") between physical hosts in the event of hardware failure or maintenance, allowing your VM to be available at all times.

WHAT ‘GUEST’ OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE SUPPORTED?

The platform officially supports Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (all editions) and 2008 (all editions), Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, Windows 2000 SP4, as well as the following Linux distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 to 4.7 and 5.0 to 5.2, CentOS Enterprise Linux 5.0 to 5.2, and Debian Etch 4.0. Both 32-bit and 64-bit variants of all systems are supported.

Our default Windows VM is supplied with Windows 2008 Web Edition x64 and our default Linux VM with CentOS 5.2 x64.

WHAT NETWORKING OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE?

Clients have two choices when it comes to connecting their VM to the world:

Firstly, a VM can be attached to our main datacentre core network, and thus directly to the Internet, using a real (public) IP address. However, this is only ideal for clients comfortable and familiar with running full firewall and security services directly on their server and is not generally recommended.

Alternatively, clients can opt for a Private VLAN (virtual network) solution which provides an extra layer of network protection between their VM and the Internet. This is also ideal for clients running multiple VMs which need to communicate with each other. The private VLAN appears as a normal network and is complemented by a managed firewall/gateway service providing connectivity out to the Internet and edge protection from network scans and attacks. The firewall/gateway service consists of a virtual port on our central firewall system and rule configuration and management by BTA. VPN tunnels to remote offices and users are also supported.

HOW DOES SOFTWARE LICENSING WORK?

Virtual Machines always need to be licensed just as you would a normal server according to the appropriate terms for the relevant operating system or application licensing terms from the original software vendor. Some vendors also have or provide specific licensing or allowances for Virtual Machines.

Clients generally have two main choices for licensing:

Firstly, we provide per-month pricing for certain operating systems, which includes Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 under the Microsoft Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) and also for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Alternatively, if a client already owns a suitable license not in use elsewhere (or purchased separately for use with a VM) then, pending receiving proof of license ownership and suitability, clients are welcome to use their own licensing on their VMs. The same approaches also apply to server applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint. If you have a suitable volume license agreement you must provide proof of license cover. If you are using a non-volume (i.e. individual) license you must provide us with the physical license details to hold for your VM on your behalf whilst it is in use.

We also make available a selection of no-cost open-source operating Linux system images including CentOS 5 and Debian. In addition, a license of Windows 2008 Web Edition is included (if required) in our Windows VMs. There is no further charge for the use and licensing of these operating systems.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO PROVISION A NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE?

If you require a standard VM setup from one of our pre-configured operating system templates then we can usually have you set up and running within a few hours, although we specify 'within 24 hours' as standard. If you require any custom configuration and/or the importing of an existing VM then this may take longer.

DO YOU PROVIDE “MANAGED” OR “UNMANAGED” VIRTUAL MACHINES?

That is entirely up to you. The standard price plan is for an “unmanaged” virtual machine - clients are expected to administer their own systems. Clients can opt for a “managed” service by enrolling their virtual machine(s) into one of our IT support services, whereby we will then manage the server configuration and monitor it’s availability and performance.

IF I ALREADY HAVE A VM RUNNING ON MY OWN SERVER OR ELSEWHERE, ARE YOU ABLE TO HOST IT?

Depending on whether we can get a backup copy of the VM, what it’s running, and its size, we may well be able to repurpose it and mount it onto our XenServer platform so you don’t have to rebuild it from scratch. For VM’s already running on XenServer it should just be an issue of getting a copy of the VM (if not too large). For other VM platforms there may be conversion work required. Such requests are handled on a case-by-case basis and would be charged on a time-and-materials basis.

HOW DO YOU CONTEND CPU ACCESS?

We allocate Virtual Machines to a maximum CPU contention of 4:1. To explain with an example: on a dual-processor physical server using quad-core processors there are eight physical CPU cores. At a maximum contention ratio of 4:1 this means we would in theory run no more than 32 virtual CPU’s (vCPU’s) worth of VM’s on one physical host.

In practice, the actual contention experienced is usually less for a number of reasons hence we use the term “maximum CPU contention”. XenServer automatically allocates CPU resources on the fly to running VMs to best maintain balanced performance. A single vCPU can never use more than one physical CPU core.

AM I ALLOWED TO ADD TO OR CHANGE THE NUMBER OF VCPU’S OR AMOUNT OF MEMORY (RAM) IN MY VIRTUAL MACHINE, OR ADD ADDITIONAL STORAGE?

Yes. We can change the number of vCPU's allocated to your VM or the amount of memory it has whenever you require. You will however need to restart your VM's operating system to take advantage of any changes. You will be charged pro-rata daily (or in part) at our normal VM hosting rates for any changes from the time your VM is restarted. There is no administrative charge for making a change, but clients are respectfully asked to only make changes when needed to and to avoid continual changes.

Additional storage can be allocated either as additional disk volumes or, in certain cases, by dynamically expanding an existing volume - this may possibly be added to your VM whilst it is running but a reboot is assumed to be required as standard.

Please note that we do not permit downward (smaller) configuration changes for a VM within the 30 days notice period for ceasing service.

HOW ARE BACKUPS HANDLED?

For all intents and purposes clients should treat their VMs as if they were physical servers and should arrange to backup or replicate critical data as their own business needs dictate. Clients may implement their own backup processes on their VMs and copy data to another location, or to additional VM disk storage, or can make use of the BTA Secure Online Backup service. Managed virtual machines will have their given backup procedure monitored on behalf of clients.

CAN I PROVIDE AN ISO DISK IMAGE FOR INSTALLATION?

If you wish we can attach an ISO disk image to your VM to allow you (or us) to install a different, or differently licenced, operating system or other software. You will need to supply us the ISO image on disk (or via upload if not too big!) and, where necessary, proof of suitable OS or application licencing. This is currently a manual task and an administrative charge may be levied.

I HAVE A SPECIFIC VM HOSTING REQUIREMENT, CAN YOU HELP?

We’ll definitely give it a try if we can! If you have a bespoke requirement please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate! We can even assist in hosting hybrid physical/virtual solutions - for example where a physical server is partnered with a Virtual Machine solution to provide extra capacity on the fly or as a backup/DR solution.

If you have any further questions or require clarification on any BTA service, please call us to discuss. Thank you.

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