Virtualisation is the most compelling tool to emerge in recent times for reducing cost, complexity, maintenance and carbon footprint of IT environments. VERY briefly - Virtualisation is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources.
The industry buzz around virtualisation is just short of deafening, showing up in all of the 'Top 5 technology trends for 2009' produced from a Google search. Like any good buzzword, it has been applied to a confusing bunch of technologies (similar to what has happened to VOIP) and as a result a good concept with a clear message has become murky. Put simply, the vast majority of virtualisation today is Server Virtualisation and it has some compelling advantages for business that use and maintain IT environments.
Key advantages of Server Virtualisation are the ability to consolidate multiple physical servers down to one or two, not only that, once virtualised, those servers are forever divorced from a specific piece of hardware. This makes changes, upgrades and management far simpler and efficient. Recovery from a disaster such as fire or theft becomes faster and far easier. Upgrading legacy systems that ran only on proprietary, expensive hardware becomes simple and cost reducing. Management overhead drops significantly, thus increasing the productivity of the IT staff and outsourced resources.
Business is having to do more with less and that is core to the concept of Virtualisation. Analysts estimate that the average business utilises somewhere between 5 percent and 25 percent of its server processing capacity. Most of the power consumed by their servers is just heating the room - not running the business. Using virtualisation to consolidate underutilised servers yields an immediate cost saving from a reduction in the number of servers. Fewer Servers means less power consumption, both from the servers themselves and the cooling systems that companies must operate and maintain. Companies are going to be rewarded for using less carbon going forward. Green credentials are a critical component of any current Government tender and will filter down to the rest of the market over time.
Even a cursory examination of Virtualisation such as this one shows compelling reasons why this is a technology worthy of your consideration if your business has servers.
or network resources.
