How virtualization can pay off for your business

As applications, data and files accumulate over months and years, many small businesses find themselves adding hardware to meet the demands. Often it's a sign of growth, but it also might be a sign that an organization may not be using its servers and storage as efficiently as it should. That's where virtualization comes in. Virtualization is a technology that can save time, money and energy by allowing you to achieve more with the computer hardware you already own.

What is virtualization?

Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing computing.

Today's computer hardware was originally designed to run only a single operating system and a single application. Virtualization breaks that bond, making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time, thereby increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware.

How virtualization works

In essence, virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. Using software, you can transform (or "virtualize") the hardware resources of a computer — including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller — to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a "real" computer.

That means a virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operating systems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own virtual (software based) CPU, RAM, hard disk and network interface card (NIC).

An operating system can't tell the difference between a virtual machine and a physical machine, nor can applications or other computers on a network. Even the virtual machine thinks it is a "real" computer. Nevertheless, a virtual machine is composed entirely of software and contains no hardware components whatsoever. As a result, virtual machines offer a number of distinct advantages over physical hardware. For instance, multiple virtual machines can share hardware resources without interfering with each other, so you can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer.

Virtualization cost benefits

The obvious cost benefit of virtualization comes from increased efficiency of resources. By getting a clearer picture of the resources you have available, you may not need to add hardware to increase capacity as often as you think.

A virtual infrastructure also reduces energy consumption by allowing you to run your applications on fewer physical servers, which, in turn, reduces your power and cooling requirements. These cost savings are only a part of the return on investment (ROI) of virtual infrastructure.

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