Virtualization and Server Consolidation

Reduce cost, system failures, and complexity while increasing business continuity What is virtualization? Suppose you want to achieve of a wide range of business advantages by making your operating system (OS) independent of your server platform or storage. This can be done with the creation of a "virtual" version of the OS. This is the essence of virtualization. Why would any one want virtualization? The value for virtualization is the ability to reduce cost, system failures, and complexity while increasing business continuity. Virtualization as a Testing Environment: Virtualization began as a system for IT professionals to safely test and understand software, installation of applications, and compatibility. Virtualization is a safe and cost effective means of learning about and applying applications. Imagine if virtualization did not exist, and you may begin to see how testing without virtualization could lead to network failure, expensive corrections, and loss of data (not to mention lost time). Virtualization gives IT professionals a safe arena to test and learn without the risk of making costly mistakes. Get More Utilization with Virtualization The benefits of immediate ROI are why more organizations are turning to virtualization to address one of IT's and business' biggest issues today computer power. Data centres are reaching their capacity limits on power, cooling, and rack space, but only 10% of their computing power is actually being utilized. Virtualization helps businesses get a higher percentage (50 80% more) of utilization out of their server hardware. This is accomplished by replicating multiple production servers on a single server running numerous instances of a virtual operating system. Virtualization has become the solution for any business that wants to increase server ROI, reduce power and cooling, and provide higher levels of availability in the event of hardware failures without impacting users. Virtualization and Disaster Recovery The concept of using virtualization in a disaster recovery environment is very popular because virtualization removes dependency on hardware. With virtualization, one can easily transmit an encapsulated application to an offsite location just like transmitting a data file and make it available on a remote machine for employees to access. This can remarkably reduce downtime in the event of system failure from days to hours, or less.