Burbank, CA 3/22/2011 10:49:27 PM
Boosting the Performance and Maximizing the Benefits of Virtual Platforms Requires Virtualization Software
The adoption of virtualization platforms as a solution to
the out-dated practice of managing multiple servers and wasting
valuable resources continues to be embraced by a number of companies. As
more companies face tighter budgets, cutbacks, layoffs, etc. they
continue to look for alternatives to their current operational practices
and because virtualization is capable of improving efficiency and
productivity within the workplace it has quickly become the cornerstone
of a new way of business.
Virtualization has essentially revolutionized how companies manage their
business, eliminating the cumbersome processes that IT admins endured
in the multiple server environment by safely and securely positioning
all of their information on a single physical computer that can be
quickly accessed through the use of virtual machines.
By implementing a virtualization infrastructure and doing away with
their multiple server setting a company is able to improve on at least
two critical aspects of their business that are essential to growth,
saving money and cultivating innovation.
The cost of managing multiple servers is significantly more than just
the expense of each machine, it involves payroll for the IT admins
charged with keeping the system functioning, it involves the costs of
powering those servers, it involves the costs associated with wasted
space on the under-utilized servers, it involves the costs associated
with lost business caused by maintaining an inefficient manner of
operating a business. These costs quickly add up and it’s reasonable to
assume that they contribute significantly to a company’s need to make
budget cuts, implement pay freezes, scale back their operations, or
simply layoff employees.
Companies that move from their multiple server environment to a
virtualization infrastructure eliminate those costs almost immediately.
With everything on one physical computer IT admins no longer have to
spend time maintaining several servers or search for problems that are
slowing down a business. It is estimated that more than half a company’s
budget for IT is dedicated to simple maintenance of their servers;
virtualization requires a fraction of the maintenance needs, meaning an
IT department has more resources for other areas of importance.
Virtualization platforms also eliminate the costs associated with simply
powering under-utilized servers. Most companies that operate multiple
servers place a single operating system or application on each server,
leaving the majority of space on that machine free. This is done to
protect those operating systems and applications in the event a problem
occurs on one of the servers but purchasing servers, maintaining those
servers, and paying to keep them powered counter the security benefits.
With virtualization all of those operating systems and applications can
be safely stored on the one physical computer and placed in their own
secure area, meaning if something were to go wrong with one of the
systems or applications it wouldn’t affect the others.
Reducing the costs for companies even more, through virtualization
platforms each virtual machine is able to share the resources of the one
physical computer across multiple environments, meaning different
virtual machines are capable of running different operating systems and
applications on the same physical computer, improving efficiency and
productivity.
Perhaps the most meaningful benefit of virtualization is its ability to
free up IT admins to innovate and develop. It is only through innovation
and development that a company can evolve and this is exactly what
virtualization encourages. The technology removes the burden of
maintaining and troubleshooting multiple servers and makes it easier for
IT to complete basic tasks like backup, archiving, and recovering as
well as managing, securing, and upgrading desktops and notebooks that
are used by the company.
Knowing that the solution to cutting costs, improving efficiency,
sparking productivity, and encouraging innovation and development is
virtualization there really is no reason a company should ignore the
technology. Once they have adopted virtualization, and for any company
that has already moved to a virtualization infrastructure, ensuring that
it is performing up to its abilities is essential. Virtualization can
obviously provide a number of benefits but the technology still requires
that IT attention. Fortunately that attention is nowhere near the
attention needed in a multiple server environment, it can be as simple
as installing virtualization software that is capable of acting as a
virtual platform disk optimizer to deliver invisible background
optimization. This is exactly what the virtualization software from
Diskeeper Corporation, V-locity, is
designed to accomplish.
Installing virtualization software like
V-locity can easily remedy issues related to I/O bandwidth bottlenecks,
virtual machine competition for shared I/O resources, and problems
related to virtual disks that are set to dynamically grow but do not
resize when data is deleted. V-locity handles the bottleneck issue by
creating a faster and more efficient computing platform for new
consolidation and provisioning initiatives without the need to add
additional hardware, it eliminates competition for shared I/O resources
by coordinating resource usage, and solves the virtual disk “bloat”
problem by compacting the virtual disk, thereby preventing waste and
allowing IT managers to better allocate their virtual storage resources.
At the end of the day virtualization platforms have provided companies
with a brighter future for their business and adopting this
infrastructure can put them on a path to growth. Just as important as
implementing the technology is ensuring that it is always performing at
the level it is capable of, this makes virtualization software like
V-locity a must. Take care of your virtualization platform and that
positive future could be very real.