Deploying a new application used to be a month-long headache and a budget-drainer at the San Diego Data Processing Corp. Now the process takes as little as 30 minutes and costs next to nothing, thanks to the extensive use of server virtualization.

The SDDPC, a private nonprofit that handles IT for the San Diego municipal government and its more than 10,000 city workers, embraced virtualization with a vengeance three years ago -- and has been reaping substantial rewards ever since.

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The first goal was server consolidation, says Rick Scherer, a Unix systems administrator who spearheaded the SDDPC virtualization project. "We were just like everyone else: We had tons of x86 machines that were only being 10% utilized," he says. "I presented to our directors that we could virtualize 20 machines into one box, get a better ROI and save tons of money plus data center space." Easier application deployment followed, which meant huge gains for business users, he adds.

Before using VMware's ESX Server, every application upgrade or new deployment meant the SDDPC had to buy -- then install -- a new server. Such is the nature of the Windows operating system, Scherer says. "Anytime there was a new application, we couldn't put it on a box with another application, because either those applications wouldn't work properly or the [application] vendor didn't support that."

For example, when the city needed to upgrade a purchase-order system for outside contractors, SDDPC had to push the project out three to four weeks to get the infrastructure ready, Scherer says. The same three- to four-week wait was in store when the organization needed to boost processing power for a Citrix Systems Presentation Server deployment. Besides the annoyance, each new HP ProLiant server cost somewhere around $10,000, he says.

When SDDPC started with server virtualization, users were surprised at how speedily IT could turn up applications, Scherer says. "But what's funny is now that we've been doing it so long, they expect it. It has put a damper on management," he says. Users are disappointed now "if they put a request in for a server and it's not up in a half-hour," he adds. One of the only things preventing further virtualization right now is the time Scherer and his colleagues must devote to day-to-day tasks and other projects.