A brief Guide to Virtualization

In the past it has been a requirement that every important application that companies relied on was installed on its own independent piece of hardware. The reason for this was that if the application crashed and brought the server down the other applications on the server would not be affected.

Over the years the server has continued to develop and become more powerful. These developments coupled with some nifty software lets us run many computers inside one computer or server i.e. Virtualization.

Each computer that is running inside of the main server is called a virtual machine and each virtual machine is independent of the other virtual machines running on the same server.

Being able to run many computers inside of one computer or server can offer our businesses many benefits in today’s competitive business and perhaps give us the edge over our competitors. Some of these advantages are

Businesses no longer have the need for one server for one application and this really gives business today the possibility for massive savings in power, hardware and administration costs as the shear volume of servers a business requires can be dramatically cut.

Every virtual machine is independent of the hardware it is running on. This is possible because each virtual machine is essentially large file. They can easily be moved from one location to another. Transferring these files can be achieved over the internet, saving it on a hard disk or even on a USB key. Once the file is in the new location it can be installed as a new virtual machine.

This process of moving the virtual machine can happen very fast over the internet. This lets us (A) Move virtual machines off our servers for hardware maintenance (B) Move our virtual machines to more powerful servers as needs require. This could be during busy periods or if the demand has risen.

It is important to note that virtualization is not limited to the servers. Many companies are now running a virtual machine for every employee that is working in there company. This virtual machine is then configured in one central site and the employee connects to the virtual machine using a standard PC, Laptop or a thin client.

By virtualization you workers desktops your company will have greater control over there working environment. This process will also increase security, reduce hardware costs and reduce the management time required on your desktop computers.

This is an orignal article by Mark Kelly.

BIO
Mark Kelly
Technical Consultant
Iping LTD
For total network piece of mind
www.iping.org