Seabreeze Virtualization Written by: Rachael Deming

Table of Contents

Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………Page 3
Benefits of Virtualization……………………………………………………………Page 4
Negative Implications………………………………………………………………..Page 6
Diffusion Analysis……………………………………………………………………Page 7
Potential Barriers……………………………………………………………………..Page 8
Support Strategies…………………………………………………………………....Page 8
Technology Adoption Curve………………………………………………………...Page 9
User Acceptance……………………………………………………………………..Page 10
References…………………………………………………………………………...Page 11

Executive Summary

The city manager of Seabreeze, including city council, are major stakeholders. This group of individuals want the city to adopt virtualization to replace the current server environment. Server virtualization means the partitioning of a physical server into smaller virtual servers. Currently, the physical server environment consists of 72 servers. The storage used is direct-attached storage (DAS). The end users have 350 computers. By transitioning to virtualization, the city of Seabreeze will benefit in many ways. This is a major undertaking and will affect many people. Training is needed, hardware will need to be removed, and a big up front expense will be a hard sell to the citizens of Seabreeze. In recent years, the city’s revenue has decreased. Included in this is the waning real estate market that has caused a decline in property tax revenues. This has directly affected the city’s bottom line. Retail and tourism has significantly dropped. Also, California law makers passed a bill that requires cities to transfer 20% of their revenues to the state. As external stakeholders, the citizens of Seabreeze are well aware of the recent financial difficulties the city has had. The demand for fiscal responsibility is a major contention with the residents of Seabreeze. The local newspaper has been running articles focusing on the local government spending. Employees of the city have been working for many years in the same position. The servers, storage, and software they work on are costing the city money that can be used elsewhere. Although these employees a very adept at working with the current system in place, any new technology implemented will require extensive training. These employees are not very “tech savvy.” As external stakeholders, these employees will be affected by any changes made by the city.

Benefits of Virtualization

There are many benefits of virtualization. Saving energy is one. By migrating physical servers over to virtual machines and consolidating them, the utility bills and cooling cost will decrease. According to www.networking.ringofsaturn.com’s usage calculator (Author unknown, n.d), each server costs about $620.50 a year in energy use. The city pays about $44,676 per year just to power the 72 servers. By adopting virtualization, the number of servers can shrink to just 12 servers. That alone saves the city $37,230 a year. In ten years that total savings is $372,300. Also, the cooling cost for the data rooms will reduce significantly. In an article written by Goff (2011), he states in a physical server environment, only about 5-15% of computing capacity is reached. In a virtualization environment, the virtual machines increases the computing capacity to 70-80%. Without virtualization, when a new system needs to be implemented, new hardware needs to be purchased. The infrastructure has to be expanded to include a server, a rack, cabling, etc. The server alone cost an average of $5500. This does not include the cost it takes for the electricity for cooling and operating the equipment. By continuing with the current 72 server infrastructure, the city wastes up 90% of it computing capacity.
With virtualization, the physical server environment can be reduced to as few as 12 servers. In a blog written by Torell (2013), she explains that the total annual energy savings can be