The biggest challenge that many companies face is
expanding their business while limiting their spending to a manageable
level. It becomes hard to increase the productivity without spending
more on budgets, marketing and other promotions. When companies try to
balance these two needs bad decisions can be made that hurt the company
over time. Companies in this situation need to examine the ways that
they can reallocate money that they are already spending. Examining the
infrastructure and the business management system can lead to reduced
operating costs.
Often the management systems that companies rely on are inefficient and
can cause a drop in productivity. In multiple server environments these
problems are easy to see and can create extra costs. Multiple server
environments can prevent a company from working to its full potential.
In multiple server environments companies put their operating systems
and applications on different physical servers that must be maintained
by IT administrators. The separate physical machines must each be
updated, backed up and maintained by the IT admins individually. The
processes are time consuming and repeating them on different machines
means that the admins cannot focus on other projects they need to
complete.
To have a multiple server environment companies must also purchase,
maintain and house all of the machines at the same time, an expensive
practice due to the initial cost and space needed. Spending money in
these areas prevents it from being used for expansion and development.
The lack of funding can damage company moral and even hurt the brand.
Cutting spending is not a solution to this problem. It is one of several
temporary fixes allow the problem to be ignored at the time but ensure
that issues will arise again as the same flawed system is used. Many
companies are finding a long term solution to the problem by switching
to a virtualization infrastructure.
Virtualization infrastructures let a company condense the information
that they need, like operating systems and applications, on a single
machine. The information can then be accessed by different virtual
computer that share the resources maintained in the single server. Doing
this makes purchasing, storing and maintaining multiple servers
unnecessary as all the information is in one place. IT admins can take
care of the server faster and shift their attention elsewhere.
Virtualization provides the same level of security that is offered in
multiple server environments. Different operating systems and
applications are stored in their own secure areas. If a problem arises
in one area, it will not affect the rest of the information.
To fully utilize a virtualization infrastructure a company must protect
their system from harm. If a system is not properly protected problems
can occur such as I/O bandwidth bottlenecks from accelerated
fragmentation, virtual machine competition for shared I/O resources not
being prioritized properly across the platform and virtual disks set to
dynamically grow not resizing when data is deleted.
There is no huge cost or incredible time commitment required to protect
your virtualization system. All a company needs to do is install
virtualization software.
Virtualization software like V-locity from
Diskeeper Corporation keeps problems associated with virtualization from
happening in the first place. V-locity, acting as a virtual disk
optimizer, delivers background optimization that will improve the
functionality and operability of the infrastructure.
V-locity eliminates bottleneck issues by creating a fast and efficient
computing platform for new consolidation and provisioning initiative
without necessitating the installation of new hardware. The software
eliminates competition for I/O resources by coordinating resource usage.
It will also compact the virtual disk and prevent disk “bloating.”
Keeping your system free of these problems keeps IT admins free from
wasting their time.
When trying to maximize profits it doesn’t make sense for a company to
work against itself. Putting temporary solutions in place to a lasting
problem is not a smart way to fix the overarching issue. Using a
virtualization infrastructure and running virtualization software is a
solution that pushes the company forward.
