Issue No. 31February 2015

The History of Virtualization

The term “virtualization” has been around since the 1960s. Because there were no personal computers in those days,  and even the simplest business computers required massive amounts of space and energy, virtualization did not become a reality until the late 1990s.

Companies realized that they could save money via a more efficient use of computing hardware. Employing the power of virtualization, they could run multiple independent, emulated computers on the same hardware that previously would host only a single computer. It has been the explosive growth of computing power and storage capacity that has allowed virtualization to become the dominant computing paradigm. Unlike the exponential growth in computer power, the requirements of most standard office software have grown minimally and in a linear fashion.

Your company might be interested in virtualization because it can:

  • Save you money by reducing the numbers of servers consuming energy, and by costing less to purchase and maintain servers and related equipment.
  • Make management, control and inspection of VMs much easier than with traditional servers.
  • Give you a flexible enviroment for various tests-and reduce the time required to bring new servers online!

Source: Veeam

To learn more about virtualization and how this technology can help you company, please Contact Us.

 

How Virtualization Works

The heart of virtualization is the “virtual machine” (VM), a tightly isolated software container with an operating system and application inside. Because each virtual machine is completely separate and independent, many of them can run simultaneously on a single computer. A thin layer of software called a hypervisor decouples the virtual machines from the host and dynamically allocates computing resources to each virtual machine as needed.

This architecture redefines your computing equation and delivers:

  •  Many applications on each server. As each virtual machine  encapsulates an entire machine, many applications and  operating systems can be run on one host at the same    time.
  • Maximum server utilization, minimum server count. Every physical machine is used to its full capacity, allowing you to significantly reduce costs by deploying fewer servers overall.
  • Faster, easier application and resource provisioning. As self-contained software files, virtual machines can be manipulated with copy-and-paste ease. This brings unprecedented simplicity, speed and flexibility to IT provisioning and management. virtual machines can even be transferred from one physical server to another while running, via a process known as live migration. You can also virtualize business-critical apps to improve performance, reliability, scalability and reduce costs.

virtualization defined

Source: VMware

For more information regarding how virtualization can help you business please Contact Us.