Over the past year, virtualization has moved to a mainstream technology that is being embraced by most enterprises. The evolution is due to the potential cost savings and increased flexibility that server virtualization can provide.From a cost-savings perspective, virtualization has the potential to reduce IT spending and improve server utilization which reduces power and cooling cost. Yet what is most exciting to IT managers is the increased flexibility virtualization can enable. IT team can deploy virtual servers faster than dedicated servers which increased their ability to react to ever changing business needs.
The challenge has been that IT applications are continuously expanding. Past solutions often involved a single application on each x86 server to avoid crashes or performance problems. Given tight IT budgets, very low utilization, and the high costs associated with low server utilization, virtualization has emerged as a way of controlling costs through consolidation while increasing the flexibility of IT.
Essentially, virtualization can improve utilization and reduce the number of servers by resource sharing. For example, server virtualization enables the hosting of multiple operating systems and applications on a single server. Plus, there is an ever increasing interest in green computing. A dedicated server operating at a very low utilization still requires a similar amount of power and cooling as a server with virtualization software operating at 75% utilization.
Today, top IT Executives and CIOs are moving away from dedicated servers and employing virtualization strategies which are in better alignment with the needs of today’s rapidly changing business environment. Enterprise that have employed virtualization technologies have made significant gains in savings and flexibility and are increasingly moving to deploy virtual servers as the default solution.
Posted under Green IT, Server Virtualization, Virtualization Strategies
This post was written by admin on September 29, 2008
