If you’re like most businesses around the world, you’re probably wondering how you can spend less, be more efficient and how to make your business ‘greener’ while avoiding higher costs. Well, the answer might just be into thin air…
Put simply, virtualisation refers to the creation of a virtual version of an actual device or resource. This could be a server, a network, an application or an operating system. The actual resource is divided to create separate virtual resources all operating on that same real resource. The goal is to maximize the capacity and efficiency of the initial resource.
As businesses' IT needs grow and evolve, virtualisation has come around as the answer to the growing demand of enterprises for solutions that will enable them to be more flexible and adapt to changes without significantly increasing cost of maintenance, storage, hardware…
This is how virtualisation helps your business.
SAVE MONEY
Virtualisation solutions enable businesses to reduce their costs by reducing energy consumption and the need for multiple physical servers.
Independent research shows that most file servers are only running at around 15 to 18 % efficiency. That’s a significant waste of both server space and money. By splitting one server into multiple virtual servers, as opposed to buying more physical servers, an organisation can make huge savings.
In consequence, businesses also save in maintenance and in real estate costs, as there is less space needed for physical servers.
BE MORE EFFICIENT
The IT team typically spends about 80% of its time dealing with problems such as downtime, security threats and server sprawl. This can be considerably reduced with virtualisation solutions.
The efficiency of the whole organization can also be enhanced via a higher availability of servers. For example, the IT team is able to carry live migration with virtual servers without employees losing access to the server, allowing them to continue working without interruption.
Users can also benefit from greater flexibility with easy access to virtual machines and applications on demand. There is no need to install applications on a physical machine to have access to that application.
Virtualisation not only delivers high level of availability but also a flexible and dynamic management solution. This increases the organisation’s agility in helping to deal more efficiently with security threats, increasing IT regulations and rate of change.
BE GREENER
Virtualisation solutions considerably reduce power consumption, as it maximizes capacity and reduces running costs of unused resources.
Server core parking, a feature of Windows Server 2008 R2, for example, significantly reduces power usage for CPUs, maximizing processing load on a minimum number of cores.
This focus on energy saving enhances Green IT, an important aspect of modern, socially responsible organisations.
Microsoft Virtualisation Solutions
At FRCI we strongly believe in the potential of virtualisation in improving businesses’ efficiency and operations. In this context, our division Isys, specialist of IT infrastructure and enterprise content management, hosted a seminar for IT professionals, in collaboration with Microsoft, on Microsoft Virtualisation Solutions last Wednesday 19 May, at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, Ebene.
Virtualisation is part of Microsoft’s strategic vision of Dynamic IT for implementing IT infrastructures that can automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with business objectives.
Microsoft’s approach focuses on adopting virtualisation as a basic IT skill and not as a specialist area. Any IT professional should be able to manage virtual solutions, which is why all Microsoft solutions come with common management tools in familiar interfaces that are easy to use.
Isys consultant Raj Seegobin took the opportunity during his presentation to do a few demos of these solutions and to present some of the new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, released in July 2009. These, grouped into 3 main focus areas, include:
- Better Flexibility :
- Live Migration
- Cluster shared volumes
- Hot add/remove of storage
- Processor compatibility mode for live migration
- Improved Performance
- Improved memory management
- TCP offload support
- Improved networking
- Greater Scalability
- 64 logical processor support
- Server core parking
For more information, do not hesitate to contact us.
