September 22, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Web host Web Drive (http://www.webdrive.co.nz) has launched virtualization to cut IT costs, it was announced recently. The New Zealand company, which bills itself as a “leading web hosting provider”, promises its service “will make affordable enterprise-level server infrastructure available to small businesses across the country (New Zealand) who are looking to cut IT costs and reduce risk”.
"There's a whole range of benefits in using virtualization," explained Daniel Williams, the company’s Managing Director. "If a single piece of hardware in the cluster fails there is redundant hardware waiting to kick into action immediately. This means hardware-related downtime is most often completely eliminated or at least limited to a few minutes."
Mr. Williams went on to add that virtualization enables companies to change hardware specifications as required to cope with seasonal changes. "Let's say Christmas is your site's busiest time and you need more server resources. Simply up the memory and CPU resources on your server and the upgrade takes a matter of minutes. No need to go and physically upgrade components on a machine. The customer is now in control as and when needed," he explained.
Web Drive's virtual server network utilizes VMware ESX and took close to a year to develop. It offers virtual servers on both Linux and Windows platforms and allows users to configure their own server requirements. "Having an in-house server or dedicated Internet server means worrying about hardware upgrades, backups, redundancy, and network support charges. With virtualization customers can spend on average $300 a month, and save thousands of dollars on all those things," concluded Mr. Williams.
Established in 1997, Web Drive is New Zealand's second largest web hosting company and serves 12,000 New Zealand business websites and over 50,000 .nz domain names.
