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It sounds like the stuff of science fiction movies, but the era of the virtualized machine is upon us. Buttons and switches have been replaced by touch screens, hardwired circuitry has been replaced by code, and computing technology has changed even the most mundane of household appliances. Nowhere is this more evident than in the IT arena. Server virtualization has changed the playing field, and businesses that integrate VMware services into their IT infrastructure realize significant benefits in rapid deployment, TCO, and bottom line revenues.
To understand the advantages of virtualization, consider what it takes to add capacity for a typical business office. Here’s the scenario- a wildly successful new product line forces a company to increase personnel by 50 people to handle the additional production volume. Assuming there is room to seat 50 new employees, a tremendous amount of physical infrastructure needs to be purchased, installed, and configured to varying degrees. Cubicles and desks built, phone and data lines run, computers need to be set up, it’s a long and expensive list, and it can take weeks or more to complete the project and put the new employees to work.
For many businesses, this growth can also force a physical relocation. While a measure of success, the prospect of moving to a larger facility often comes at the worst possible time in the lifecycle of a business, taking away focus that should be spent on capitalizing their successes. The successful company that fumbles during expansion is a common but nonetheless true business cliché.
Now imagine the same scenario, but instead of having to measure out floor plans and order desks and computers, you go to your web browser and fire up your MyOffice control panel. You go to the ‘Number of Employees’ field and change it from 100 to 150. You run through a series of check boxes, selecting such options as ’desktop or laptop’, ‘cubicle size’, ‘enable/disable voice mail’, and at the end you click ‘save’ and your new employees are ready to walk in and sit down to work. That’s the power of virtualization.
With NaviSite and VMware services, the emphasis changes from hardware to resources. With rare exceptions, businesses don’t want servers; they want applications to run, with optimal performance and security. In other words, they want resources. This resource based approach allows administrators to add processing capacity, system memory, storage space, and even server instances on the fly. This is incredibly valuable, giving business decision makers the ability to react to new trends and marketing initiatives with unprecedented speed. A new server can take weeks to purchase and install, but a new server instance can be spawned in seconds. It’s a tremendous advantage in a tough economy, slashing total cost of ownership and redefining the concept of rapid deployment.
Virtualization also dramatically reduces the security risks that come from the physical server model. Denial of Service attacks, intrusions, viruses and other malware are generally designed to exploit single points of failure, overwhelming specific interfaces or hardware and software resources. Virtualization effectively counters that by spreading resources out, reallocating them instantaneously and removing exploitable targets. For hackers, it becomes the equivalent of fighting a rainstorm with a baseball bat.
Concepts like Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing aren’t theoretical anymore, they are important aspects of any modern business plan, and virtualization puts businesses of any size in a position to win under this new set of ground rules. NaviSite’s VMware powered service offerings allow businesses to reap these benefits while eliminating the high costs and dangerous risks associated with archaic single server architectures.
Tags: Virtual Dedicated Server, Virtualization, VMWare servers
