ne, and turn multiple servers into a computing pool that can adapt more flexibly to changing workloads.
- Save energy. Businesses spend a lot of money powering unused server capacity. Virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, reducing the energy required to power and cool them.
- Save time. With fewer servers, you can spend less time on the manual tasks required for server maintenance. On the flip side, pooling many storage devices into a single virtual storage device, you can perform tasks such as backup, archiving and recovery more easily and more quickly. Its also much faster to deploy a virtual machine than it is to deploy a new physical server.
- Reduce desktop management headaches. Managing, securing and upgrading desktops and notebooks can be a hassle. Desktop virtualization solutions let you manage user desktops centrally, making it easier to keep desktops updated and secure.
What to Consider
Since virtualization makes it easy to set up new virtual servers, you may end up with a lot of servers to manage. Each server needs to be managed just as if it was a physical server. Keeping track of where everything and how your virtual resources are using physical resources is vital, so shop for solutions that have easy-to-use tools that help you monitor and measure use.
Virtualization isnt a magic bullet for everything. While many solutions are great candidates for running virtually, applications that need a lot of memory, processing power or input/output may be best left on a dedicated server.
For all of the upside virtualization isnt magic, and it can introduce some new challenges. But in most cases the many cost and efficiency advantages will outweigh any issues, and virtualization will continue to grow gain popularity.Did this help you understand virtualization? Let me know, and send me any additional questions you have on the topic. Also, please send your suggestions for other technology terms and areas that youd like explained in upcoming columns. You can reach me at firstname.lastname@example.org, or my Twitter handle, lauriemccabe. For perspectives on other industry topics, visit my blog.
|Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com Forums. Join the discussion today!|