Virtualisation serves up benefits to business

One of the most exciting technologies which has come of age in recent months is server virtualisation. Echoing 1960’s mainframe principles, it allows one physical server host to run multiple “virtual” servers simultaneously.

The business benefits are potentially huge. Computer Weekly recently documented how Newcastle under Lyme’s Borough Council will make savings of £280,000 over the next three years, by converting over fifty physical servers into six virtual servers – this represents nearly a 90% energy saving. So by reducing the number of servers which need powering and cooling, they are doing their bit for the environment too.

But low total cost of ownership (TCO) and green aren’t the only benefits...

Virtualisation technology can be used to create new virtual machines from business critical systems running on unsupportable, legacy hardware. This improves efficiency and reliability whilst also reducing support costs.

With the right set up, virtualisation can radically simplify an organisation’s disaster recovery procedures. Each entire virtual machine is represented by one file, which can be easily copied to another server host ready to power on in the event of a failure. Waterstons recently implemented a customer solution which reduced down-time in a disaster test from six hours to just eight minutes.

The best bit is, with more than one host in your server room, this failover can be automated. Virtual machines that were running on a failed host can restart automatically, providing a dramatic high availability solution.

To find out more about this technology try visiting:
http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/

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