Burbank, CA 3/30/2011 12:24:04 AM
News / Business

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.