Virtualisation

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.

Consider the following; you have numerous servers that currently support your business. You have servers for storing files, emails and messaging, business applications and network management. In this scenario, every cost you incur for a server in the maintenance, management, upgrading and power consumption just to name a few are multiplied by each server in your network. For most businesses in the 10-20 user space, this number can be in excess of 6 servers.

With massive leaps forward in technology performance in the last few years combined with the maturity of virtualisation technology, it is now possible to consolidate your server infrastructure saving you money while increasing performance. Modern day low and mid-range servers now perform far greater than high end servers of just a few years ago.  Consolidating many “virtual” servers on to one powerful server allows for greater utilisation of resources, greater flexibility with resource allocation, and of course reduced costs.

One concern with virtualisation is what happens if the one physical server goes down. The virtualisation technology has an answer for that as well. What we do is have two physical servers providing the base platform. The software is then able to move the virtual server role onto the running physical server until the faulty server is restored. So not only are we providing savings in energy and resources, but we are providing fault tolerance from hardware failures. Some other key benefits of virtualisation include:

• Hardware agnostic (meaning we can seamlessly move virtual servers from one platform to another)
• Better resource utilization
• reduced carbon emissions making your business greener
• Greater flexibility for future expansion and scalability
• Rapid server deployment with template operating systems (deploy a server in minutes not hours)
• Greater stability

To get a real dollar figure on what virtualisation can save your business, contact Effective IT for a free virtualisation cost benefit analysis.