Atlanta 5/19/2011 11:58:25 PM
Virtualization Software Ensures Resources are Maximized in a Company’s Virtualization Infrastructure, Improving Bottom Line and Bolstering Growth
For
any company to grow their business they must have the resources
necessary to foster development and innovation. It is through these
resources that companies
are able to create more effective methods of operation and bolster
their presence in new markets for their products and services. What many
companies don’t realize is that they already have the resources to do
this; they just aren’t being utilized properly.
While in the traditional sense time isn’t considered a resource because
it can’t change the reality is a shift in how operations are conducted
within a company can promote efficiency and productivity, both being
factors that are measured to some degree by
time.
Companies
that manage their information inside a multiple server environment are
typically the ones that find themselves struggling with growth. The
reason
this is true is simple, multiple server environments are time-consuming
systems that essentially paralyze a company’s resources, especially
money and manpower.
Within
a multiple server environment companies separate their operating
systems and applications, placing them on a number of servers. In the
past placing
all of this information on a single server was considered a security
risk, leaving a company vulnerable if something like a network crash
were to occur.
Securing
information is of course paramount to any company but entrusting that
security to a multiple server environment can be incredibly inefficient
and
actually do just as much damage as a crash. For starters servers aren’t
cheap and when a single operating system or application is placed on
one server it only utilizes a small portion of the available storage
space, meaning there is considerable waste.
Money
isn’t the only thing wasted in a multiple server environment; IT admins
spend a significant part of their day simply keeping these servers
operational.
Because all of these operating systems and applications are spread
across different servers each machine has to be maintained on an
individual basis. What this means is that IT admins have to move from
each server to complete basic tasks like updates, recoveries,
archiving, etc., preventing them from actually concentrating on
developing and innovating new means of growing the business.
Without
an alternative these multiple server environments might still be a
necessary evil yet the truth is there is a much more efficient and
productive
means of managing information that maximizes the abilities of a
company’s resources. By adopting a virtualization infrastructure in
place of a multiple server environment a company can eliminate the heavy
price burden as well as the wasted hours spent maintaining
that out-dated system.
Virtualization
platforms enable a company to place all of their operating systems and
applications on one physical machine and from that machine different
virtual computers can access that information. Because these virtual
computers share the resources of the physical machine they can run
different operating systems and applications at different times.
The
benefit of this is obvious, it saves companies money that would have to
be used to purchase servers, store those servers, and maintain those
servers.
That benefit is clear but the real benefit maybe in the time it
provides IT admins to actually advance business initiatives. In a
virtualization infrastructure IT admins no longer have to dedicate so
much time to those basic tasks; with all of the information
on one physical machine they can complete these operations in a
fraction of the time it takes in a multiple server environment.
Virtualization
doesn’t ignore the importance of securing the information placed on the
physical machine, these operating systems and applications are actually
placed in their own secure area, meaning that if anything were to
happen to one it wouldn’t affect the others.
Of
course virtualization is a technology and with any technology there can
be problems if it is not protected. When a company ignores their
virtual platforms
they open the door to problems like 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. These issues are capable of countering any of the benefits that a
company has seen from their virtualization infrastructure.
What
this brings to light is the importance of properly maintaining and
securing the virtualization infrastructure and this can easily be done
with
virtualization software. As a virtual disk optimizer, V-locity from
Diskeeper Corporation, delivers background optimization which in turn
improves the operability and functionality of the virtualization
platform.
Diskeeper Corporation
designed V-locity to eliminate 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,
eliminate competition for shared I/O resources by
coordinating resource usage, and solve the virtual disk “bloat” problem
by compacting the virtual disk, thereby preventing waste and allowing
IT managers to better allocate their virtual storage resources.
Maximizing
the resources that a company has is the only real way to promote growth
and improve the bottom line and with the technology behind
virtualization
infrastructures this can be achieved in a very quick manner. Knowing
how much of an impact that virtualization can have on business it only
makes sense to ensure that technology remains operating at its peak
level and virtualization software is that assurance.
