Applications of Virtualization

When you look deep into the heart of your data center and start counting up the resources you have paid for, you would think you could run a small country with them. Consider this example of a typical medium size data center: with an ageing mix of 20 off-the-shelf blade and 19” rack servers, struggling to deliver specific applications, at peak times the center was seen to be wasting over 80% of combined CPU & Memory resources. Why? Because that wasted resource was always somewhere just out of reach.

Let’s consider a few applications of virtualization that will improve performance, free up space, reduce your carbon footprint, protect you from disasters and importantly save you money.

Server Consolidation: run less physical servers, save money on power, heat, space, hardware support contracts and people time. Clearly the most compelling

Utility Computing: delivering computing power as a service, more useable firepower per rack as workloads become liquid and free to migrate from one node to another. Get processing power where you need it, when you need it. Move your internal customers away from the concept of ‘my servers’ and get them to simply request performance on demand.

Legacy Risk Mitigation: moving increasingly demanding/business-critical server workloads onto a scalable fit-for-purpose hardware platform.

Desktop Virtualization (finally without vendor lock-in if you want)

These may seem obvious but each has its own strong motivation and return on investment. Whether purely financial, or more looking towards operational and environmental gains, they’re definitely worth considering.