The benefits of Virtualisation

July 27, 2009

 

Virtualisation in the context of hosting has come a long way in recent years. Creating and using VM’s was once a risky business, used only by the brave on low risk projects.

These days, virtualisation is fast becoming an industry standard, as the technology behind it has matured, offering a totally robust and reliable product. Businesses across the globe are already taking advantage of the overwhelming benefits that virtualisation provides:

Better utilisation of resources
Multiple virtual servers / applications can be consolidated onto fewer sets of physical hardware, making better usage of physical resources. Though the virtual environment is ‘shared’ across physical hardware, each virtual server still has its own dedicated physical resources (RAM, CPU etc.).

Reduced risk
The architecture of Virtual environments allows for more redundancies (such as centralized SAN storage) to be built in, significantly reducing down-time in the event of hardware or software failure. Things can fail independently. For instance, one operating system can fail while others running on the same machine continue to function normally.

Virtual servers consist of a single system file, which means you can easily create a backup copy of your entire VM. If you encounter problems, you can replace your existing VM with your backup copy.

Scalability, Flexibility and Availability
The process of ‘installing’ new servers or allocating additional resources to a particular virtual server is now faster and easier to achieve, it can be done in minutes instead of having to do a physical machine upgrade and buying new hardware. We can just ‘turn it on’ by giving your system more RAM, CPU and storage.

Combined with shared storage device, virtualisation enables you to migrate from one physical machine to another without a single second of downtime allowing easier maintenance of physical hardware. Should a server have a hardware issue, the virtual machines can quickly and easily be restarted on another physical set of hardware, minimising any downtime.

It’s Greener
Better utilisation of resources reduces energy consumption in data centre environments. As much as 70% energy consumption can be achieved in most cases.

RSAWEB has extensive experience with virtualisation technology in various different applications. Many of our Dedicated Server & Managed Hosting Server customers are currently utilising virtual platforms to great effect. Give us a shout to find out how virtualisation can benefit you.