What is Virtualization?
When most people think of virtualization, they think of server virtualization, which is the partitioning of one physical server into multiple virtual servers. These virtual machines can reside on a “Hypervisor” that sits between the operating system and the hardware to control the usage of resources.
Along with server virtualization, there are other key virtualization concepts that play a big part in building a virtual data center. These other concepts are defined as:
Network Virtualization
This is a process of combining hardware and software resources and presenting a single virtual network entity. With this virtual network you can split available bandwidth into channels that can be assigned to hardware resources. This concept of network virtualization is intended to improve productivity and efficiency.
Desktop Virtualization (VDI)
Desktop virtualization is the process of running a user’s client operating system on a virtual infrastructure within the data center. This allows a user to access their applications from anywhere using either remote access or thin client technology.
Storage Virtualization
Storage virtualization is the concept of simplifying physical storage—taking information from multiple network storage devices and storing it on what would appear to be a single storage device. All of this information can be managed from a single console. Storage virtualization is key in simplifying the complex task of managing a storage environment. It allows a storage administrator to more easily, back up, archive, and recover data.
Why Consider Virtualization?
Faster Disaster Recovery – Decrease the time it takes your business to recover from a disaster by building a virtualization environment that can be powered on at any location with a few hours.
Increase Hardware Utilization by 80 Percent – Reduce the footprint in your data center by virtualizing multiple servers on shared hardware. (For example, we can streamline 30 operating systems, sitting on multiple physical servers, into 2 physical servers!)
Resources on Demand – Give virtual servers more memory, storage capacity, and virtual CPU’s on demand through a single console.
Decrease Hardware Maintenance Cost – By utilizing fewer servers to maintain your data center, you cut down maintenance costs.
Decrease Operating Support Cost – Decrease IT support cost by reducing the number of servers you must support and maintain.
Increase Productivity and Efficiency – Virtualization saves you time and effort! It gives you the ability to revert back to the previous settings with a click of a button by using snapshots. You can also manage all virtual servers from a single console, and perform maintenance on physical servers by using virtual “motion” technology. This allows you to virtual motion a virtual server from one physical box to another without interruption.
High Availability – Using virtualization software, virtual servers will automatically power back on a different physical server in the event of a hardware failure.
Fault Tolerance – Enable technology to run mirrored copies of a virtual server so that ZERO downtime is incurred in the event of a hardware failure.
