Companies are always struggling with ways to keep
expanding and growing their business while still protecting their bottom
line. This is difficult because growing the business requires a large
financial commitment to more employees and promotion. Balancing these
two needs often leads to companies making bad decisions that hurt the
company in the long-term. The first thing that a company should do to
find extra money is examine their business management system.
Many companies use business management systems every day that are
inefficient and a waste of resources. Multiple server environments are a
perfect example of a business management system that creates
unnecessary expenses and limit the funds a company can allocate for
expansion. Multiple server environments work against the company and
prevent it from reaching its maximum potential.
A multiple server environment exists when companies put their
information, applications and operating systems on different servers and
keep them separate from one another. Each of these servers must then be
updated, maintained and backed up by an IT administrator. Because each
machine runs independently of the others it takes the IT admin a lot of
time to make sure they are all running correctly, keeping them from
managing other projects that they are given.
Multiple servers must also be purchased, stored and maintained
independently of one another. This is a very expensive process that is
seen as necessary by companies that have been using this setup for
years. In reality the high costs associated with each additional server
can cause funding shortages for other areas of the company. The lack of
funds can cause employee morale to drop and damage the company's brand.
The drastic consequences of budget cuts make them an unreliable solution
to the problem. The same flawed system will continue to create
problems. Many companies are creating a long-term solution by switching
to a virtualization infrastructure, eliminating the problems that are
associated with multiple server environments.
Running a virtualization infrastructure lets a company condense their
data in one place. Information, operating systems and applications are
all housed on a single server. The server can be accessed by different
virtual computers that all share the computing resources housed on the
single server. Putting all of the company's resources on a single server
eliminates the costs associated with storing, purchasing and
maintaining multiple servers and allows IT admins to use their time in
more productive ways.
A virtualization infrastructure even provides the same level of security
as a multiple server environment. Operating systems, applications and
information are all stored in their own secure areas on the server. If
one area of the server is damaged the other areas remain intact and can
still be accessed.
A fully functional virtualization infrastructure must be protected from
harm. Problems 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 are deleted can occur on a
virtualization infrastructure that is left unprotected.
Protecting your virtualization infrastructure does not require an
expensive investment of time or money. All a company must do is install
virtualization software on their system. Virtualization software like
V-locity from
Diskeeper Corporation can keep the problems with
virtualization infrastructures from ever happening. V-locity acts as a
virtual disk optimizer and performs background optimization to 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 initiatives
without requiring the addition of hardware. V-locity also eliminates the
competition for I/O resources by coordingating resource usage. It will
even compact the virtual disk to protect the disk from "bloating." By
preventing these problems with virtualization software the IT admins
will be able to use their skills in more productive ways that benefit
the company.
Balancing a company's profit margin and expansion goals created
difficult situations and forces the company to find ways to free up
extra money. Rather than continually shuffling money around and cutting
funds a company needs to examine their business management system and
make sure that they have a virtualization infrastructure protected by
virtualization software.
