Virtualisation refresh

Project overview

Virtual machines (VMs) use software to mimic the hardware and operating system of a physical computer to allow many operating systems and applications to run on a single device. Using virtual machines is much more efficient in terms of energy, management, and cost when compared to using separate hardware for each server. 

At York, we use virtual machines in our data centres to provide staff and students with access to specialised software or operating systems which would otherwise require a dedicated computer. We run around 1200 VMs that cover critical services such as door access control and building management, finance and HR systems.

At the scale at which the University operates, with many applications connecting to users and devices on campus, on-premises server hosting remains more cost-effective than using cloud services, although we do utilise cloud services where they deliver particular benefits.

The physical servers hosting our virtual machines are reaching end of life and we've achieved a major cost saving by using this need for a hardware refresh, to also switch to a different vendor for the VM hosting platform.

Since the migration, our applications and services hosted on our VMs run faster than before but with no change to the way they operate.

When?

All 1200 virtual machines were migrated to the new platform by the end of April 2025. 

Virtual machines were migrated to the new platform in two phases:

• Gold tier: approximately 300 virtual machines hosting critical services such as those providing student information and teaching services, building access control and finance systems were migrated before the end of 2024. This tier is designed to host critical services and can survive the failure of either one of our two on-campus data centres. This is our older hardware, so had to be migrated first.
• Silver tier: approximately 900 virtual machines were migrated by the end of April 2025. This tier included the majority of our services, such as web servers, file servers, application servers for university wide and departmental applications. It also hosts our test and development environments for many systems.

Why?

The servers that host our virtual machines were reaching end of life and would soon become unsupported. Separately, our existing vendor for the VM software platform considerably increased their annual fees during 2024, while also reducing their level of support.

The need to refresh both hardware and software came at an opportune time, enabling us to switch to a different vendor offering a much more cost-effective solution. This solution also includes high-quality support, which is essential for teaching, research, and everyday life on campus.

Benefits

• We’re able to continue to offer a reliable and secure VM hosting service, critical to keeping University operations working smoothly.
• Better performance, better security and better support from the VM platform vendor.
• A significant cost saving to the University.