In December, I compared Cloud Computing vs. Virtualization. However, I wanted to take time to explain the advantages of virtualization in and of itself. There are tons of benefits to an IT organization or business when choosing to go virtual. Rather than break it down Letterman style, here are the top 5:
1. Faster server provisioning
Server virtualization enables elastic capacity to provide system provisioning and deployment at a moment’s notice. Rather than filling out purchase orders, waiting for shipping and receiving, and then racking, stacking, and cabling a physical machine only to spend additional hours waiting for the operating system and applications to complete their installations, consider cloning a gold image, master template, or existing virtual machine to get a server up and running within minutes.
2. Reduce the data center footprint/Save energy, go green
Simple math . . .
Fewer servers + less networking gear + a smaller number of racks needed = less data center floor space required
Plus, migrating physical servers over to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer physical servers’ means lowering monthly power and cooling costs in the data center. Of course, that’s in you own your own data center. If you’re outsourcing it entirely the benefits are incremental. That can further save you money if you don’t happen to own your own data center and instead make use of a co-location facility
3. Increased uptime
Today’s virtualization platforms offer features such as live migration, storage migration, fault tolerance, high availability, and distributed resource scheduling. The ability to quickly and easily move a virtual machine from one server to another is perhaps one of the greatest single benefits of virtualization. These types of features just aren’t found on physical servers, which helps with business continuity and increased uptime.
4. Improve disaster recovery
We put our disaster recovery plan to the test in November after a gas leak forced an emergency evacuation. Luckily the disruption was minor (it could have been a whole lot worse) b/c our critical business applications and data reside in the cloud. Whether you’ve contracted with an outside firm to store your data or you’re doing it in house, virtualization offers hardware abstraction capability. By removing the dependency on a particular hardware vendor or server model and consolidating servers down to fewer physical machines a disaster recovery site no longer needs to keep identical hardware on hand to match the production environment. This allows IT to save money by buying cheaper hardware in the recovery site since it rarely gets used.
5. Applications!
We all have legacy applications that we’re still using, begrudgingly or not. Many times these older apps won’t run on a modern operating system or newer hardware. By virtualizing and encapsulating the application and its environment, you can extend its life, maintain uptime, and finally get rid of the old hardware you’ve been keeping on hand for solely that purpose.
So with all of these advantages to virtualization I guess the open questions really are . . . What will you do with my old hardware? What will you do with all that extra time?
To discuss additional advantages of virtualization for your business or to move forward in virtualizing, give us a call.
Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, DC and Virginia.