What is virtualization, and is it relevant to your business?
You may have heard IT professionals talking about virtualization technology in the past and wondered what it was, and if it could help your business. The simplest explanation of virtualization is that it creates a virtual replica of something physical—such as a server, a storage device, or a network.
The advantage of virtualization is that it can interact with other software as if it were the physical thing it represents. While this may seem abstract, it can have many practical benefits for your company.
How can you apply virtualization technology to your business?
Virtualization technology can cut costs, streamline your IT management, and improve system efficiency for your business. For instance, in server virtualization, a piece of software called a hypervisor is deployed over the underlying hardware. The hypervisor then acts as a stand-in for the actual server. Multiple operating systems can run off the same hypervisor, sharing the server’s processing power between them, but without interfering with each other.
Better yet, you can use the hypervisor with multiple servers for greater efficiency. Instead of having one server per operating system, you can have twelve operating systems of five servers. The hypervisor keeps the operating systems separate while sharing the server processing power between them. And if one server goes down, the operating systems can still function on the remaining servers, reducing overall system downtime.
As another example, storage virtualization allows you to either combine the storage space across multiple devices into one unit. It can also allow you to split a single unit into multiple discrete storage spaces.
VNet Private Cloud can bring desktop virtualization to your business.
At Brightline, we use desktop virtualization to bring a more mobile work environment to our customers. VNet Private Cloud allows you to run a virtual desktop off multiple machines. If you have a project running on your work computer, you can pick up right where you left off from your home computer or your laptop. And if you lose your laptop or your computer breaks down, you won’t lose any of your work. Because your desktop is run off a separate machine, your data stays safe.
Interested in using virtualization technology to boost your business performance? Contact us today for an assessment.
