Focus: Disaster Recovery
As an added bonus of utilizing virtualization, you get a built-in disaster recovery plan, because the virtualized images can be used to instantly recover all your servers. Ask yourself what would happen now if your legacy server died. Do you even remember how to rebuild and reconfigure all of your servers from scratch?
With virtualization, you can easliy back up complete servers as self-contained units. Virtual servers can be stored and transported in as few as four discrete files - these files can easily be copied to a backup device (in case of hardware failure) or transported offsite (in case of a natural or physical disaster). And since they are virtual, they can be restored to any type of virtual host that is capable of running the same hypervisor. This eliminates hardware dependency and speeds restoration time.
If you are using VMware technology in production, you are two thirds of the way to a robust disaster recovery plan before you even begin to design it.
Product Focus: vmWare
The VMware vSphere portfolio is the most adopted, most feature-rich cloud infrastructure available on the market today. VMware has invested hundreds of thousands of hours in engineering, architectural design and solution validation to deliver integrated solutions with exceptional performance, reliability and simplified management.
Virtualization with VMware vSphere can help drive IT efficiency in the smallest environments by delivering:
- Optimized infrastructure for exceptional virtualization performance and energy economy to run your business-critical applications with confidence
- A tightly integrated solution that is easy to deploy and manage, enabling you to respond to business needs faster
- A virtualization environment built on a trusted hypervisor and hardware layer
SMBs have limited resources, and always need to make do on tight budgets. VMware lowers total infrastructure costs with the industry’s leading virtualization platform to get the most out of your hardware.
Small Business Server Virtualization
What is Server Virtualization? It's a new way to use the incredibly powerful server hardware that is now being produced. Several years ago, we reached the point where a server computer had more processing capacity than was normally required by a single business server application (think email server), so many servers went under-utilized. With Virtualization Technology, a single physical server with excess capacity can now host multiple "virtual" servers, thereby using the full capabilities of the hardware.
Virtualization Technology has been around in one form or another for many years, but only recently has it been perfected on smaller server hardware so that it can be used reliably and with almost no compromises.
How Does It Work?
You can use software to transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an x86-based computer - including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller - to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer. Each virtual machine contains a complete system, eliminating potential conflicts. Virtualization works by inserting a thin layer of software directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machine monitor or “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other. By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, and network devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it needs them.
Why Does A Small Business Need Virtualization?
Bottom line, it means significant cost savings for the small business, in technology management, in hardware investment and on the power bill
But how do you determine whether virtualization is right for you? There is no universal answer, but any of the below factors would suggest that your business can benefit significantly from virtualization:
- Upcoming need to replace aging servers
- Currently running five to seven or more physical servers
- Low utilization rates of existing servers
- Server sprawl or constrained data center space
- Escalating support, energy, and/or space costs
- Significant business growth ahead
- Risk of disruption from natural disasters/other events
If any of the above apply to your small business, the only true requirements are that your business currently owns or plans to invest in shared storage, and that you have virtualization-savvy IT staff or technology partners (or access to training for staff), as virtualization requires new skills and knowledge to manage effectively.
We use virtualization extensively in our business - let us show you how it can work for you!
