Burbank, CA 3/30/2011 12:24:04 AM
Virtualization Platforms Ushering in New Era of Growth for Companies, Ensure You Get the Most Out of Your Infrastructure with Virtualization Software
While the pace of business is often quick there are
obvious shifts in the environment that many companies fail to notice, a
mistake that will likely leave them behind their competition. Over the
past several years many “established” companies have crumbled simply
because they failed to adapt to the new way of operating their business.
This new way of doing business is almost always centered on technology
that affords companies an opportunity to reduce costs, minimize waste,
become more efficient, improve productivity, and concentrate on
development and innovation. With all of these benefits associated with
the advancement of technology it’s easy to see how a company that fails
to adopt these practices will fall behind the companies that embrace
them.
One of the most obvious shifts in the environment of business has to do
with the manner in which companies manage their information. There was a
time when companies kept all of their information on paper that was
then tucked away in filing cabinets; of course that system was quickly
dismissed when it became obvious that storing information on computers
was more reliable, efficient, and cost-effective; now, just as the
filing cabinet has become a relic, so too has the system that replaced
it.
The multiple server environment that moved companies from filing
cabinets to computers has become just as cumbersome and costly as its
predecessor. IT admins are spending the majority of their time trying to
maintain these multiple servers as well as identify problems on the
machines before they become a bigger issue. With IT dedicating so much
time to the basic tasks of keeping the servers operational there is
little time for development and innovation, essentially leaving a
company’s business stagnant.
On top of the issues related to IT admins, multiple server environments
can cost a substantial amount of money just to keep running. Powering a
server isn’t cheap and when you have several servers the cost naturally
climbs. What is obviously frustrating for IT admins is the fact that the
servers that are storing operating systems and applications for the
company are underutilized, using just a fraction of their storage
capacity. These servers typically host a single operating system or
application for security purposes, ensuring that if there was a problem
with one of the operating systems or applications it wouldn’t bring down
the rest.
Securing their information is of serious importance for a company but
spreading their operating systems and applications across multiple
servers causes unnecessary costs for a business. Each one of these
servers has to be addressed individually by IT, meaning basic tasks like
updates, backup, archiving and recovery, as well as managing, securing
and upgrading desktops all take longer.
So if multiple server environments are the problem what is the solution?
It’s impossible to ignore the impact that virtualization platforms have
had on businesses. Virtualization enables a company to securely place
all of their information on a single physical machine and the resources
that are stored can then be accessed by multiple virtual computers,
meaning these multiple virtual computers can run different operating
systems and applications which eliminates a company’s need to have them
stored on separate servers.
Because the operating systems and applications that are stored on the
single physical machine are each placed in a secure environment the
threat of something going wrong and everything falling apart is no
longer valid. This advancement toward virtualization not only alleviates
the burden placed on IT to maintain multiple servers, it frees a
company of the cost to keep those multiple servers running.
The real value to IT is simple, with everything stored on one physical
machine maintenance becomes a much easier task and with the time that
they save they can turn their attention to what every company relies
upon, innovation and development for the growth of their business.
Virtual platforms represent the shift in the business environment that
has been defining how companies grow but right alongside this new
technology is the importance of maintaining its performance
capabilities. Just as any technology comes with potential issues so too
does virtualization, issues that include I/O bandwidth bottlenecks 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, resulting in free space being wasted.
To prevent these issues from cropping up companies must install
virtualization software like V-locity from Diskeeper
Corporation. V-locity acts as a virtual
disk optimizer delivering background optimization which in turn
improves the operability and functionality of the virtualization
platform. As virtualization software V-locity is an essential tool to
ensuring that a company receives all the benefits associated with their
virtualization infrastructure and fosters in a period of growth and
development for their business.
Virtualization software like V-locity
is capable of eliminating 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, V-locity also
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.
The constantly changing environment of business means a company must
always be ready to adapt and with the explosion of virtualization
platforms creating new opportunities for growth it is essential that
this infrastructure is healthy and capable of meeting the demands placed
upon it. For any company welcoming in virtualization there is no better
way to ensure success than the simple step of installing virtualization
software.