News / Business
Virtualization Platforms the Solution to Multiple Server Environments, Keep Infrastructure Healthy with Virtualization Software
While many companies have settled in their multiple server environment the truth is this environment is what’s preventing them from growth and in many ways dragging them backwards. Multiple server environments are an incredibly expensive manner of managing a company’s information, require a significant amount of time to maintain and trouble shoot, occupy considerable space, and ultimately they hold back IT admins from doing what they do best, develop and innovate ways for a company to become more efficient and productive.
What’s even more frustrating about multiple server environments is the waste that is involved. Most companies will place a single operating system or application on a server, something that uses a fraction of the server’s storage capacity. With all of these operating systems and applications spread across different servers IT admins have to treat them individually, meaning updates, backup, archiving and recovery all have to be performed on each server and IT still has the task of managing, securing and upgrading desktops for the company. IT admins spend the majority of their time carrying out these basic jobs just to keep the servers running.
Of course the reasoning behind spreading these operating systems and applications across a multiple server environment is for security. There is a fear that if all the information is placed on a single server and something where to happen to that server then all the information would be affected. That is a legitimate concern but it’s not a concern that can’t answered by virtualization.
The reason virtualization has become so popular and pushed companies into a new era of managing their information is because it allows them to place all of that information on a single physical machine which can then be accessed by multiple virtual computers. All of these virtual computers share the same resources of the physical machine, allowing them to run different operating systems and applications at different times.
On the security front, the operating systems and applications that are stored on the physical machine are placed in their own protected environment, meaning if something where to happen to one of those operating systems or applications it wouldn’t affect the others.
So the security issue is solved and as for the benefits the list is long, especially concerning the IT admins and the most obvious is that with everything stored on a physical machine IT saves a considerable amount of time when they are addressing those basic tasks, no longer do they need to move from server to server, everything can be done directly on the physical machine.
Cutting down the time spent on maintenance and troubleshooting means that IT admins can focus their attention on moving company’s business forward. Simply put virtualization has become a necessity for business development and innovation.
As positive as the advancement of virtualization has been it does bring some issues that can affect its performance. Among these issues are 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 can all occur on a virtualization platform.
Fortunately solving these issues doesn’t have to be a problem or be of great enough concern to prevent a company from adopting a virtualization infrastructure for their business. The answer to these issues is virtualization software like V-locity from Diskeeper Corporation. Because V-locity acts as a virtual disk optimizer it delivers background optimization which in turn improves the operability and functionality of the virtualization platform.
As a virtualization software V-locity eliminates the issues related to bottlenecks by creating a faster and more efficient computing platform for new consolidation and provisioning initiatives without the need to add additional hardware, the virtualization software 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.
For any company still stuck in a multiple server environment it’s time to recognize that virtualization is the move forward. When you do step into the future be sure you protect your virtualization platform with virtualization software like V-locity.
