UPenn To Manage Virtualization with Virtual Iron Software

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 01/06/09

The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has gone public with deployment of virtualization software from Virtual Iron Software. Virtualization enables IT administrators to streamline the IT infrastructure by running multiple applications and operating systems on a single server.

"Our team needed to control IT infrastructure expenses while ensuring key applications remained available and effective for our user base of human resources employees," said Chris Blickley, manager of IT for UPenn human resources. "With Virtual Iron we have been able to consolidate servers to not only save money on physical space, but also provide better system responsiveness and uptime. We are currently projecting a 37 percent savings on maintenance and upgrade costs alone."

The Virtual Iron software includes three components:

  • The VI Center provides a means to control and automate virtual resources from a central location;
  • Virtualization Servers are deployed on bare-metal, industry-standard servers to streamline data center management; and
  • Open Source Virtualization, based on an open source hypervisor, loads when the physical server boots; it manages hardware resources and leverages hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities built into Intel and AMD processors.

Jefferson Davis Community College in Brewton, AL also recently virtualized some of its servers. By implementing Virtual Iron, Anthony Hardy, director of technology and IS, was able to streamline support for the server environment and increase usage at one third the cost of comparable offerings. The school runs both Microsoft and open source applications.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • cloud icon connected to a data network with an alert symbol (a triangle with an exclamation mark) overlaying the cloud

    U.S. Department of Commerce Proposes Mandatory Reporting Requirement for AI, Cloud Providers

    This proposed rule from the department's Bureau of Industry and Security aims to enhance national security by establishing reporting requirements for the development of advanced AI models and computing clusters.

  • man working on laptop outdoors

    Digital Leadership Must-Haves for 2025: A CDO's Picks

    Now that he's more than a year and a half into his chief digital officer role at NJIT, we've asked Ed Wozencroft to reflect on his areas of concentration: What work must digital leaders "own" in 2025?

  • group of college students looking at large screen of data visualizations

    Scalable Cloud Strategies: Values for Higher Education

    From a massive, 23-campus cloud-and-security transformation, to a small college's "lift and shift" entry into the public cloud, Unisys Higher Education Strategist Christopher Wessells knows how higher education leverages the cloud. Here, he examines some of the values scalable cloud strategies offer our institutions.

  • translucent lock composed of interconnected nodes and circuits at the center

    Cloud Security Alliance: Best Practices for Securing AI Systems

    The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization whose mission statement is defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, has released a new report offering guidance on securing systems that leverage large language models (LLMs) to address business challenges.