ester adds that “by using desktop virtualisation,
employees are allowed to access all the applications they need, by allowing hardware-based
GPU sharing through a secure connection irrespective of the device being used, and regardless of the network. Over and above this, desktop virtualisation boosts security. Employees are known to engage in
V
as a strategic catalyst with regards to influencing IT and
even business strategy as well. With virtualisation as an
accelerator and key component, many experts believe that
the traditional IT department will move away from being
a business support structure, to becoming a key centre
of innovation promoting business growth and generating
revenue in its own right.
risky behaviour, such as downloading funny videos, opening
suspect attachments, or clicking on links in unsolicited
emails. Through desktop virtualisation, the tech manager
can set specific permissions, preventing documents that
contain malicious software from entering the network.”
So the case for virtualisation is manifold then - cutting costs
via server consolidation and managing assets from one
platform, improved disaster recovery and backup plans,
provisioning computing resources to end-users more quickly with simplified software deployments, offering more flexibility to the business through being able to access the same
applications and data from virtually anywhere, improved
security whereby important data remains locked away in a
datacentre, and increased compliance helping to ensure
that version control and authorisation are maintained across
users.
Challenges Too…
Many forward-thinking virtualisation experts not only extol
the operational benefits of virtualisation, but also see it
16 | www.firstdistribution.co.za
Virtualisation is not without its challenges though. It leads
to the shared pools of resources spanning compute (CPU,
memory), storage and network I/O, and helps to maximise
the sharing and utilisation of these underlying resources.
However, excessive contention can occur for these limited
resources, leading to degraded effectiveness and performance bottlenecks.
Organisations also need to carefully consider what physical resources are necessary to support virtual workloads
and monitor the hardware resources accordingly. “With
virtualisation, it’s really a matter of putting the right physical
systems behind it,” says David Payne, CTO at Xcedex, a
virtualisation consulting firm based in Minneapolis. In addition, many applications aren’t yet tuned for virtual environments either.