As
more and more companies are utilizing the technology of virtualization
as a means to maximize their resources and encourage growth the days of
managing
and maintaining multiple servers is quickly becoming a thing of the
past. This advancement has certainly been embraced by companies who
found they had been dedicating a large percentage of their IT resources
to simply keeping their operating systems up and
running, an approach to business that not only chewed up a significant
amount of money but also slowed or completely halted innovation.
What
the popularity of virtualization has done is open the eyes of many
companies to the inefficient manner in which they have been operating
their business.
Many of these companies have been managing multiple servers, most of
which have been hosting a single application. The idea behind doing this
may have been founded with good intentions but the truth is it has
created a great deal of waste.
Most
servers that do host a single application are only using a small
percentage of the server’s capacity. This single application approach
was accepted
because there was a fear that if a problem with the application were to
cause a server crash then it would only affect that one server, leaving
the remaining servers intact thus not compromising the applications
that were being hosted on those servers. What
this meant was that a server was utilizing a minimal percentage of its
capacity to host an application, wasting the majority of its storage
space.
What
many companies found was that this approach, managing multiple servers
that hosted few applications, took its toll on the IT team. Instead of
concentrating
on development the emphasis was placed on maintaining the hardware that
was in place, a time-consuming task when you’re talking about multiple
servers. So what companies discovered was that they were dedicating a
large percentage of their resources to preventing
catastrophes rather than promoting opportunities.
Virtualization
has shifted the way in which companies manage their IT needs, opening
the door for innovation while still maintaining and securing the
operating systems and applications that a company utilizes on a daily
basis. Essentially companies can eliminate the multiple
server approach and run virtual machines on a single physical machine,
maximizing capacity and storage space in a safe and secure manner.
It
is secure because that one physical machine is able to partition off
space for multiple operating systems and applications so that if a
problem arises
with one of these things it won’t affect any of the others that are on
the physical machine. That takes care of the security and as for
efficiency; all of the virtual machines on the physical machine share
the resources of that physical computer, something
that couldn’t be done when managing multiple servers.
While
virtualization has dramatically lowered operating costs within
companies and promoted innovation and development from their IT
departments there are
issues concerning the technology that need to be kept in check. Because
a company now has multiple virtual machines on a single physical
machine there can be issues with I/O bandwidth bottlenecks due to
accelerated fragmentation, the competition for shared
I/O resources among the virtual machines is not always prioritized
across the platform, and virtual disks that are set to dynamically grow
do not resize when data is deleted- leaving free space that is wasted.
These issues are something that can easily be handled with the right software, software that acts as a virtual platform disk optimizer that can reduce the bottlenecks and create a faster and more efficient computing platform as well as frees up vital storage resources by eliminating issue of wasted free space. Companies like Diskeeper have been designing solutions for the advancement of virtualization and by utilizing their software businesses can benefit from all the opportunities that virtualization offers, namely greater efficiency and productivity within their organization. Taking the step to advance you’re business through virtualization is critical, just make sure your steps are on solid ground with software solutions like V-locity from Diskeeper.