Virtualization 101 for small business and enterprise

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2008 in the subject Technology, grade: A+, Capilano University (Capilano University, Canada), 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Virtualization is a new and emerging technology that is rapidly growing, taking industry bystorm. In business, virtualization has become a new buzz word, but not many decision-makersactually understand what it is. In today's fiercely competitive world, it is crucial for decisionmakersto learn more about virtualization to see if it can give their organizations leverage overtheir competition. Not only that, virtualization can save businesses of all sizes a lot of money. Summed up in one sentence, virtualization is an information technology (IT) logistics strategythat can save businesses time and money. Today, most IT data centers use one machine for oneserver (e.g. one machine to serve e-mail, one for data, one for the website, etc.), causing serversprawl. Eventually businesses run out of room for new machines, leaving them stuck in a badposition. With virtualization, each server's programs, files, and processes are merged into onefile (an image), and is then placed among other images on one machine. Consolidation of ITresources improves server utilization and consequently increases efficiency, lowers theelectricity bill, and reduces physical footprint. It also makes deploying new servers cheap. Adifferent approach to virtualization is making multiple physical resources appear as one physicalresource, simplifying data-center operations and network administration through oneconsolidated virtual environment.The advantages of virtualization are almost infinite, but the main points are business continuity,saving money through outsourcing data-processing (cloud computing), and preserving legacyapplications. The disadvantages are possible security problems, an initial investment up-front,and uncertainty about the roll-out process (e.g. bugs that take time to work out).