Virtualization technology is not a new technological breakthrough. Organizations have used virtual servers and desktop virtualization for many years to optimize shared computing resources.
However, despite the wide availability of virtual machines, many organizations fail to use a virtualized environment because they don’t understand the benefits of virtualization.
Before you can understand virtualization benefits, you must understand the terms and concepts being used. This post will explain what virtualization is, key terms like virtual machine and hypervisor, and the key benefits of virtualization.
What Is Virtualization?
Virtualization is a computing approach that enables one physical machine to be split into multiple virtual machines that operate independently. For example, one physical computer can be split into multiple virtual computers running multiple operating systems.
Besides computers, virtualization is commonly used on physical servers. Virtualization enables a single physical server to act as multiple physical servers. Server virtualization allows organizations to run several operating systems and maximize computing resources.
What Is a Virtual Machine?
When a physical device is segmented through virtualization, each segment is a virtual machine. Virtual machines operate as if they were their own physical server or computer.
When physical hardware is segmented through virtualization, every one of the virtual machines on the single physical machine is allocated its own resources, storage capacity, and memory.
A virtual machine runs its own operating system and applications independent from the other virtual machines on the physical hardware.
What Is a Hypervisor?
How do multiple virtual machines coordinate resource usage and interact with each other without causing interference? A software abstraction layer, a hypervisor, coordinates interactions between virtual machines and hardware.
Hypervisors are vital to the success of a virtual environment. Without a hypervisor, maintaining a virtualized environment would be impossible. This software layer allocates resources and ensures all virtual machines in a virtual environment interact appropriately.
The hypervisor allows a single physical server or computer to run multiple operating systems independently. Beyond assigning resources, a hypervisor also protects all VMs in the virtual system from the others’ failures, errors, and vulnerabilities.
The Key Benefits of Virtualization
Now that you know more about virtualization and virtualized environments, it is important to understand the top organizational benefits of virtualization.
The virtualization benefits your organization should consider include the following:
- Cost savings
- Greater efficiency
- High resiliency
- Environmentally friendly
Cost Savings
The main benefit that most organizations look for in any technology is cost savings. When it comes to computing power, purchasing additional hardware is the only way to get more. Purchasing new hardware gets expensive fast.
Virtualization can help your organization fully utilize the computing resources of the physical infrastructure already in place. Unfortunately, organizations deploy servers or computers for specific tasks that don’t fully utilize available computing power.
Too often, organizations use a single server to handle a single task. In virtualized environments, organizations can split a single server into several virtual instances that enable resources to be fully consumed.
Virtualization saves organizations money by reducing server sprawl and utilizing available resources without purchasing additional hardware.
Greater Efficiency
Desktop, network, and server virtualization allow organizations to be more efficient. For example, a virtualized system is much simpler to manage and maintain than a physical environment.
Instead of managing and maintaining several servers, with virtualization, your organization can use fewer servers, which enables your IT department to spend less time maintaining servers and more time focusing on other initiatives.
In addition, when utilizing a virtual server and network virtualization, adding new VM instances, deploying updates, implementing security patches, and installing software is simpler. Plus, virtualization enables higher server availability and scalability.
High Resiliency
Virtual desktops and operating systems are not bound to physical machines. As a result, backing up, copying, and cloning a virtual instance is easy.
Your organization no longer has to waste countless hours deploying environments on new hardware.
In addition, if there is a natural disaster or damage to your machines, your organization can quickly deploy its virtual machines on new hardware.
Not only does storage virtualization lead to simplified data center management, but it also gives organizations peace of mind that data is safe and available no matter what may happen.
Environmentally Friendly
Many organizations are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Virtualization is an environmentally friendly way to access computing power.
The more hardware your organization uses, the more power it consumes. Virtualization reduces hardware requirements and, in turn, reduces an organization’s power consumption.
Using less power is not only environmentally friendly but also helps your organization reduce operating costs. So, ultimately, virtualization not only benefits the environment but is also beneficial to your organization’s bottom line.
Final Thoughts
Virtualization has so much to offer organizations. But unfortunately, virtualization benefits are not always fully understood by businesses.
Once you understand what virtualization is and how it can help your organization, you will be interested in how you can take advantage of it.
If you want to learn more about virtualization and develop a winning virtualization strategy for your business, contact an experienced technical partner like Koombea.
You don’t have to develop a virtualization strategy on your own. Instead, get help from an experienced team of experts and fully utilize your organizational resources.
