Optimizing Performance of Virtual Platforms with Virtualization Software Reduces Company Costs and Promotes Innovation

Trying to operate a successful business is certainly no easy task and with the concerns about the economy still on the minds of many that task has become much harder. Many companies have taken a much more aggressive approach to cutting their operating costs and among the hardest hit in this move have been IT admins. Already a demanding job, the expectations placed upon IT admins have grown as they have seen their resources cut while still facing the pressure to not only keep the business on track but actually move it forward.

In order for this lofty goal to be achieved a dramatic shift in how things operate must be implemented, meaning if the old course of action wasn’t working then the solution to the problem must be in a new course of action. There is nothing wrong with having high expectations but for those expectations to be realized the proper tools must be accessible.

For many companies this means abandoning their old system of managing information and moving into the age of virtualization platforms. Not only will this giant leap forward reduce costs, improve efficiency and productivity, and provide additional security, it will also ensure more time for IT admins to do what they do best, innovate and develop.

A quick look at what IT admins are forced to manage in the multiple server environment and it becomes clear that a company’s path to growth is littered with obstacles. On a monetary cost basis the practice of managing multiple servers is full of waste; in many instances more than half of an IT budget goes to simple maintenance and troubleshooting. Basic tasks like backup, archiving, and recovering as well as managing, securing, and upgrading desktops and notebooks used by the company can become a complicated and lengthy process for an IT admin dealing with multiple servers.

In most cases these servers are hosting a single operating system or application, leaving the majority of a server’s storage capacity unused, or simply put, wasted. Servers are costly machines and they are even more costly when they are underutilized. With information spread across multiple servers managing that information can be extremely taxing for an IT admin, this means many companies are spending large amounts of money just to keep their information accessible. More money is being spent just to keep those servers running and when you’re talking about several servers the cost to keep them powered can be considerable.

Because of the time demand and potential for problems associated with managing multiple servers a company’s efficiency and productivity obviously suffer. It is simply not possible for employees to meet the expectations placed upon them when the information they need can’t be accessed because of a computer freeze, file hangs, or it’s simply lost.

Of course none of this would matter if there wasn’t an alternative and fortunately for IT admins who are enduring budget cuts but still facing high expectations virtualization platforms can help them realize those expectations.

Moving to a virtualization infrastructure allows IT to move all of their operating systems and applications onto one physical computer and from virtual machines that share the resources of that physical machine all of that information can be accessed. This consolidation of information onto one physical machine immediately eliminates the cost of managing multiple servers, eliminates the costs of maintaining those servers, eliminates the costs of powering those servers, etc.

Just as important as the cost savings associated with this consolidation of information is the fact that it improves efficiency and productivity. Because IT admins won’t have to search through multiple servers trying to identify maintenance issues or troubleshoot problems these routine tasks can be completed in a fraction of the time through virtualization.

What makes virtualization platforms great is the fact they are capable of providing a high level of security for the information being stored on the physical computer. Security was the backbone for the argument in favor of multiple server environments, insisting that putting all the operating systems and applications on a single server put everything at risk if something were to go wrong. With the virtualization infrastructure all of those operating systems and applications are stored on one physical computer yet they are secured in their own space, meaning if something were to go wrong with one then it wouldn’t affect the others.

IT admins might argue that the greatest benefit of virtualization is it provides them with the time to do what they are best at, innovate and develop new ideas to push a company forward. Innovation and development is the only way that a company can advance their business and virtualization platforms are the tool needed to encourage that growth.

With the expansive possibilities afforded by virtualization the technology does come with some issues that can cause a few problems which include, I/O bandwidth bottlenecks fast due to accelerated fragmentation on virtual platforms, virtual machine competition for shared I/O resources not effectively being prioritized across the platform, and virtual disks set to dynamically grow do not resize when data is deleted. Instead free space is wasted.

While these are certainly issues that could slow the performance of a virtualization platform they can also easily be overcome with virtualization software.

Virtualization software like V-locity, created by Diskeeper Corporation, is capable of acting as a virtual platform disk optimizer, delivering invisible background optimization. IT admins know the value of disk optimization and by installing virtualization software like V-locity the issues mentioned earlier can easily be kept in check. This is because V-locity V-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.

Trying to succeed in business while practicing an out-dated method of managing information is a losing battle, the advancement of technology has opened the door to virtualization and from virtualization platforms a company can immediately improve upon the areas of their business that will keep them moving forward. To maintain that growth with virtualization take care of your platforms by installing virtualization software.