Web Drive Launches Virtualisation to Cut IT Costs

Web Drive Launches Virtualisation to Cut IT Costs

AUCKLAND - Leading Web Hosting provider Web Drive (www.webdrive.co.nz) has today launched a virtualisation service that will make affordable enterprise-level server infrastructure available to small businesses across the country who are looking to cut IT costs and reduce risk.

Virtualisation has become the hottest technology in recent times as businesses look to move from risk-prone standalone servers, both in-house and online, to high-availability clustered servers with multiple levels of redundancy. Where a customer would previously have a dedicated server to handle their web or office requirements virtualisation now means that the resources of a single enterprise-grade server are shared by multiple users.

"There's a whole range of benefits in using virtualisation" says managing director Daniel Williams. "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." Users also have the ability 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," says Williams.

The power behind Web Drive's virtual server network is VMware ESX, a popular virtualisation package that is in use by most Fortune 500 companies, and the company has invested close to a year and half a million dollars in building the network infrastructure.

Web Drive is offering virtual servers on both Linux and Windows platforms and customers can configure their own server requirements and order online. The server network is hosted in a high-availability data centre meaning the company can offer customers a service level of 99.99% guaranteed uptime.

Williams says "Having an in-house server or dedicated Internet server means worrying about hardware upgrades, backups, redundancy, and network support charges. With virtualisation customers can spend on average $300 a month, and save thousands of dollars on all those things."

-ENDS-

Established in 1997 and based on Auckland's North Shore Web Drive is New Zealand's second largest Web Hosting company serving 12,000 New Zealand business websites and over 50,000 .nz Domain names. The company specialises in web hosting, domain name management, and server hosting. Some of its clients include Air New Zealand, Subway, Stagecoach, Fletcher Building, and Slingshot.

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