Online dispensary Pharmacy2U is using virtualisation technology to consolidate servers and free up spare capacity to support its disaster recovery plans.

Virtualisation involves partitioning servers into smaller virtual servers, each of which can run separate operating systems.

The online pharmacy, which fills NHS and private prescriptions, has moved its email and customer relationship management (CRM) applications into a virtual environment and consolidated four servers into one.

‘We wanted to have a disaster recovery plan that would allow us to continue working even when we cannot get into our offices,’ said Pharmacy2U IT director Steven Dobson.

‘We previously used back-up tapes, but with the business growing we needed a disaster recovery plan. Virtualisation allows us to mirror our servers at our offices and a hosted centre.’

The applications are backed up each night. If the system goes down the switch to the back-up server takes less than an hour, says Dobson.

Pharmacy2U installed SWsoft Virtuozzo management software, which allows it to control the virtual environments from a centralised interface.

The firm runs Linux on HP Compaq servers for email and CRM applications and Windows for testing and development.

The company is also planning to consolidate six hosted web site servers into three by the end of the year.

Using server virtualisation to support disaster recovery is an innovative use of the technology, says Butler Group analyst Alan Rodger.

‘For an online company, disaster recovery is critical to ensure it is up and running instantly in the event of failure. Its whole business relies on availability,’ he said.