Virtualisation technologies are an ideal foundation for your IT infrastructure. They are the most effective way of reducing IT running costs and getting more done.
It can enable you to reduce the number of servers that your organisation requires. Fewer physical servers should reduce running costs.
If a physical server fails, the virtual machines (VMs) are automatically restarted on another physical machine in that cluster. No data loss or downtime.
Backing up servers is much easier process to perform in a virtualised server environment. You’ll be better prepared if disaster strikes.
Instead of directly installing an operating system onto physical servers another application is installed instead, called a ‘hypervisor’. In simple terms this thin layer of software creates a virtual pool of resources from the group (or cluster) physical servers that are virtualised. These resources; CPU, hard drives, USB ports etc., are used to create the virtual machines (VM), which could be new servers. A standard operating system is then installed on the VM.
Once the operating system is running applications can be installed onto the VMs as if they were physical servers. Most applications are will run effectively in a virtualised environment, however there are exceptions. It’s worth checking with the software manufacturer to check if it is supported that environment.
One of the benefits of virtualisation is that one physical server can run many VMs. These VMs could be running completely different operating systems.
Use our online calculator to find how how virtualisation could affect your organisation