Using Virtualization

OnlineMasai — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:27:09 +0000

Let’s face it. Rarely do you get a blank check when it comes to your IT budget. Yet data is growing at an alarming rate, and more applications and services are being added than removed. At the same time, you are expected to keep doing what you have been doing with a constantly shrinking budget, or you are asked to do more with the same or fewer resources. Today’s challenging economy is only compounding the issue and making it nearly impossible for you to meet business needs without exceeding IT resources.

The Solution – Virtualization.

Virtual machines allow the sharing of the physical machines resources between different virtual machines, each running its own operating system. The software layer or host providing the virtualization is called a hypervisor. A hypervisor can run on bare hardware or on top of an operating system. Simply put, server virtualization software allows you to run multiple guest computers on a single host computer with the guest computers believing they are running on their own hardware. By doing this, you gain all the benefits of any type of virtualization: portability of guest virtual machines, reduced operating costs, reduced administrative overhead, server consolidation, testing & training, disaster recovery benefits.

Examples of server virtualization products are:

VMware Server, Workstation, Player, and ESX Server
Microsoft Virtual PC
Virtualbox

Virtualization could save you money, time and your data in case of disaster. It also helps reduce the costs of power and cooling, improve the use of servers, do more with less hardware.

VMs consist of only a few files. Provided you shut down the applications and the VM properly, you can copy these files to another machine or back them up to tape quickly and easily. This provides a simpler, more robust and reliable backup and disaster recovery option than conventional backup approaches.

Online Masai :: The Digital Nomad » Virtualization

Using Virtualization