T
o anyone involved in the IT industry, the word
‘virtualisation’ is one which has no doubt grown
awfully familiar over the last few years. In a
quirky kind of way, the technology itself has
arisen and become coveted due to the never-ending technological advances and updates
which dominate the IT sector. Virtualisation allows CIOs
and IT managers to harness the benefits of these constant
updates in a practical and cost-efficient manner. And in an
age where cost-efficiencies are a key item on any business
agenda, it’s no wonder that virtualisation has grown in the
way that it has.
Put simply, virtualisation can be said to be the act of moving, or ‘migrating’ as experts refer to it, physical systems
into a virtual environment. This can extend to various areas
of a business’ IT infrastructure, such as server virtualisation,
application virtualisation, network virtualisation, storage
virtualisation and desktop virtualisation.
servers, businesses are able to eliminate large and chaotic
IT rooms, confusing intertwining cables and bulky hardware.
This reduces the overall cost of the hardware and the related management, space and storage costs that go along
with it.
Running multiple operating systems and applications on a
single computer and consolidating hardware allows businesses to obtain higher productivity from fewer servers or
machines as well, whilst dynamic load balancing can lead
to improved application performance.
“More and more businesses are turning to desktop virtualisation as a means to keep their employees well equipped
while keeping costs down,” says Richard Vester, director
of Cloud Services at EOH. “This is particularly good for the
bottom line in tough economic times.”
These can be described as follows:
- Server virtualisation – consolidating multiple physical
servers into virtual servers that run on a single physical
server.
- Application virtualisation – an application runs on
another host from where it is installed in a variety of ways. It
could be done by application streaming, desktop virtualisation or VDI, or a VM package.
- Network virtualisation – with network virtualisation, the
network is ‘carved up’ and can be used for multiple purposes such as running a protocol analyser inside an Ethernet
switch. Components of a virtual network could include NICs,
switches, VLANs, network storage devices, virtual network
containers, and network media.
- Storage virtualisation – with storage virtualisation, the
disk/data storage for your data is consolidated to and managed by a virtual storage system. The servers connected to
the storage system aren’t aware of where the data really is.
Storage virtualisation is sometimes described as ‘abstracting the logical storage from the physical storage’.
- Desktop virtualisation - separating an individual’s PC
applications from his or her desktop. Virtualised desktops
are generally hosted on a remote central server, rather than
the hard drive of the personal computer.
Multiple Benefits
Virtualisation has multiple benefits to a business, simplicity being one of them