The benefits of Virtualisation
Virtualisation offers users the ability to pool their technology into some form of centralised, controlled data centre, by creating virtual servers instead of installing new physical servers. This is accomplished in a number of ways, depending upon the technology being virtualised, and is beginning to play a major role in making IT more flexible and cost-effective for all sizes of business.
Server Virtualisation
Server virtualisation is the process of containing one or more complete server operating systems, and their applications, within a virtualised environment on a host server. Some of the benefits include:
- Protecting the host server from virtual server crashes and misbehaving or malicious applications
- Allowing the host server to schedule and allocate resources such as memory and disk space between the virtual servers
- Introducing the possibility of migration of a complete virtual server between physical hosts
The key business needs addressed by server virtualisation centre around issues of total cost of ownership and high availability. IT managers are being placed under increasing pressure to introduce efficiencies into both their own departments, and to their wider organisation. Server virtualisation can deliver greater efficiencies from server hardware, and can provide the foundation on which to build a highly fault tolerant server environment.
In summary, the solutions may be virtual, but the benefits are real!
- Energy saving - fewer servers mean less power and less to cool
- Lower management costs - all the resources are on one server so management is easier and quicker
- Maximised utilisation of hardware and software servers
- Run multiple operating systems and applications on the same server
- The solution provides a higher availability than a non-virtualised server
- Reduced footprint - less rack space and lower heat output lead to less environmental impact and manufacturing resource
There are other forms of virtualisation, such as:
Application Virtualisation
Application virtualisation is a set of technologies that seeks to centralise the execution and delivery of an organisation's applications and is most often associated with Microsoft Terminal Services. The benefits include enhanced data security, disaster recovery and reduced IT operational costs.
Desktop Virtualisation
Desktop virtualisation refers to the delivery of a complete virtual operating system (for example Windows XP) running on a dedicated virtual machine. In order to make the provisioning of these virtual machines manageable, a broker service is required in order to automatically allocate virtual desktops to users.
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