Fosters Emea, the wine importing and supply arm of the Fosters Group, is using server virtualisation technology to reduce its servers from 30 to just four.

The company has already halved its servers to 15 and will complete the consolidation over the next few months.

Server virtualisation involves partitioning physical servers into smaller virtual servers, each of which can run multiple operating systems.

Fosters has installed virtual servers using VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 and two storage Equallogic storage arrays provided by Bell Microsystems to handle growing storage demands.

Fosters Emea technology services manager Ken Kaban says virtualisation offers greater flexibility and scalability, enabling the company to upgrade its IT infrastructure without increasing the size of its data centre.

‘Virtualisation makes our servers and storage run more efficiently and has reduced our need for maintenance,’ he said. ‘Virtual servers use less power, less heat and less space.’

The virtual data centre environment includes a number of custom applications, web servers, domain controllers and remote access server. The company is also looking to support sales applications, enterprise resource planning and reporting.

Datamonitor analyst Vuk Trifkovic says a lot of servers are not used to their full potential because companies build in redundant space to meet peaks in demand. ‘Many companies are already testing or deploying virtualisation,’ he said.

• Wine importer Fosters Emea is consolidating its servers using virtualisation technology.
• The supplier says infrastructure will improve management.