What Is Virtualisation? What Does It Mean To Your Business?

By Dave Twilley

Virtualisation is a word I’m sure everyone has heard bouncing around for some years now, so what does it actually mean in real world terms? How can it help us deliver better solutions? What does it mean to our clients? This is the focus for my blog as all too often technology is developed first and then effective ways of making use of it are found afterwards. Whereas in the case of Virtualisation, as you’ll see, this technology has been developed to address real world problems which exist right now and have done for some time. The end result is that Virtualisation has taken off in a big way in a relatively short period of time. This blog aims to give you an overview of the technology without going into too much technical detail, after all, most of our clients are concerned about what it actual means to them rather than how it works, as that’s what we’re paid to do!

Concept – The concept is very simple, in the past we have used one server, running one system, whether it be Windows, Linux or something else, typically the relationship between the physical hardware and the software running on it has been a one to one relationship. As technology has improved, with faster processors and cheaper storage, it has become inefficient for servers to run just one system, it would be like having a garage capable of parking 5 cars but only being “allowed” to put one car in it. Before Virtualisation, this was exactly the case, companies were having to buy 10 servers to run 10 systems, regardless of how much each one was actually being utilised as there was simply so no way around this but with Virtualisation, we are able to chop one physical server into 10 pieces and run all 10 on one physical server, (note that how many will fit on one server depends only on how powerful the one server is), clearly the possibilities here are immense, one garage no long means one car, now the question is, how many cars would you like to put in your garage.

So, what does this mean in real world terms?

Lower Hardware Costs – Clearly one powerful server would cost less than 10 mid-range servers, so the upfront cost of any technology refreshes or new setups would be significantly lower by using Virtualisation. Often this is a major concern for businesses as the cost of hardware can easily spiral out of control, hardware needs to be replaced when it is no longer fit for purpose, Virtualisation helps reduce the cost of such projects which typically occur every 3-4 years as existing hardware comes to the end of its life.

Lower Power Consumption – Using one server instead of 10 reduces the power overhead significantly, there are 10 times less power supplies to worry about, 10 times less fans (sometimes noise is an issue so this may be of some benefit to some businesses who don’t have dedicated sound proofed server rooms), 10 times less heat produced by processors and disks. With many businesses having initiatives to save energy, as fair amount can be saved in this area as these servers are typically running 24×7, 365 days a year, so any reduction in power consumption will soon add up.

Less Physical Space Required – Typically a large business will have a dedicated server room, however for smaller businesses space is at a premium, so handing over an entire room to just house the equipment is inefficient, therefore Virtualisation can reduce the floor space required by your IT equipment in some cases. Some businesses also choose to locate their servers offsite in a dedicated data centre facility, in this case, the charge for hosting these servers is directly related to the space which they take up and the power which they consume.

Consolidation – We’ve all heard it before when you have a perfectly good server which has served you well for many years, and you want to use a new product in your environment, such as a document management system, an email archiving product or a CRM package, you approach your IT company and the first thing your told is, “it isn’t “compatible” with your existing server, or wont “play nicely” with an existing product, you need to buy a new one to put it on”, or “the company who provide it won’t support it if it’s on the same server as another vendors product”, by using Virtualisation you don’t need to buy a new server, so long as you have spare resources on your existing virtualised server, you can simply sandbox off an area and install the new system directly in without having to find the money to buy a new server, this is a major benefit, often the cost of a new system such as CRM seems as simple as just buying the product, but when you add up the over head of the additional servers it can cost you more in hardware than it does to actually buy the CRM package in the first place, with Virtualisation this problem disappears.

Lower Migration Costs – As the Installations Manager this one is particularly important to me, historically, if a client wants to replace a server, we would have to prepare a new server for them, setup migration of the data, speak to 3rd parties (who may themselves wish to pass on a cost to our clients for assisting or carrying out migration work on their own products), arrange downtime and so on. Whilst we have this down to a fine art due to our experience in this arena, we can now take it one step further. With Virtualisation we have the ability to take a “copy” of an existing physical server and “virtualise” it whilst its still running and consequently still operational to the business, (with the aid of 3rd part products like DoubleTake), then in a period of dramatically reduced downtime, simply switch the operation of the physical server to the virtual one, remove the physical server and everything will continue as it was before, with the exception that the server is now “virtualised”. The overhead for such tasks is dramatically reduced, the downtime is shortened, therefore the impact on the business is lower, and very little 3rd party work needs carrying out as essentially nothing has changed. Essentially this is the equivalent of the Tommy Cooper table cloth trick (with the exception that it’s executed with clockwork precision nothing falls over!).

Hopefully this blog has removed some of the mystery behind Virtualisation technology and you can now see how such technology can benefit your business in real world terms rather than just being a technology someone has just told you that you should have because, “its new”, “its better”, “its shiny”.