Virtualization Platforms Represent Shift in Information Management, Virtualization Software Provides the Efficiency and Security Every Company Needs for Business

The advancement of technology has always been a driving force behind business, affording companies new opportunities to become more efficient and productive while minimizing their costs. Of course these opportunities are presented only when the technological advancements are adopted into the operations of a business; it’s a different story for those companies who remain chained to an out-dated system of managing their organization. Failing to remain in stride with technology can produce devastating results for a company, costing them a significant amount of money in wasted resources and dramatically affecting their bottom line.

Perhaps the greatest benefit that technology offers a company is in how they manage their information and while there was a time when a multiple server environment may have proven effective in today’s business world a much leaner, better organized, and cost-effective system is needed.

This need has given rise to the virtualization infrastructure, a platform that allows companies to eliminate the expensive practice of operating a number of servers while advancing their business to the next level.

In a multiple server environment companies distribute their information across a number of servers, placing operating systems, applications, and other data on individual machines, essentially fragmenting their information. This presents a number of obvious problems. To start, servers aren’t cheap and right along with the expense of these machines is the fact that because the information being stored on them is minimal they are being underutilized, meaning a company is wasting money on storage space that is never used.

Money isn’t the only thing wasted in a multiple server environment and IT admins can attest to this fact. IT admins find that the majority of their time is spend simply maintaining the operability of a multiple server environment, having to dedicate themselves to basic tasks like backup, archiving, and recovering as well as managing, securing, and upgrading desktops and notebooks that are used by the company. Because all of this information is spread across a number of servers each server has to be managed individually, a time-consuming effort that prevents IT admins from concentrating on innovation and development.

Shifting to a virtualization infrastructure eliminates not only the costs associated with a multiple server environment but also creates more time for IT to focus on the growth of the business, something that is necessary for a company to remain viable.

What a virtualization infrastructure allows a company to do is place all of their information on a single physical machine and with different virtual machines which share the resources of the physical machine these operating systems and applications can be accessed and utilized. This instantly rids a company of the costly practice of purchasing servers as the costs associated with keeping them running. With all of the information on one physical computer IT admins can easily take care of those basic tasks, reducing the day-long process into a fraction of the time.

While the premise of a multiple server environment was that it provided greater security for a company’s information, reducing the damage that could be caused in the event of a network crash, a virtual platform can provide the same level of security without any of the drawbacks. In a virtual platform the operating systems and applications are stored in their own secure area within the one physical computer so if something were to go wrong with one it wouldn’t affect the others.

All of the benefits associated with virtual platforms have attracted a number of companies to abandon their multiple server environments and embrace the newer technology. This is the first step in becoming more efficient and productive and it’s important to understand it is just the first step. For a company to truly receive all the benefits that a virtual platform can provide the technology must be protected which means installing virtualization software to safeguard and enhance performance.

Failing to install virtualization software can open the door to problems within a virtualization infrastructure including 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. These issues can slow down performance and compromise the integrity of a company but virtualization software like V-locity from Diskeeper Corporation has been designed to handle 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. Additionally, 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

There is little doubt that virtualization platforms can help guide companies through this difficult business environment, one that demands more efficient and productive practices with minimal costs. Once a virtualization infrastructure has been put in place it only makes sense to keep it operating at its peak level and something as simple yet effective as V-locity from Diskeeper Corporation can be the insurance policy every company wants for the security of their information