There is a lot of confusion surrounding virtualization in the market. The term, virtualization itself is massively overloaded. As soon as it gained popularity and success in key areas, every company left, right, and centre jumped on the bandwagon saying they are virtualizing applications, data, network, and storage. All these solutions provide different advantages to a business. However, the most interesting benefit that enterprises are considering to opt for is server virtualization.
Server virtualization is widely regarded as the “new technology”. While it’s certainly not a new technology by any means, server virtualization is a very mature technology and has been around for more than 10 years. Businesses who have embraced server virtualization technology simply cannot live or survive without it. For a small business, with tight budgets, growing competition, and escalating operational costs, it becomes extremely important to look at every direction for cost savings. That’s where the true magic of server virtualization happens.
Presently, this is a widely discussed topic among thinkers, challengers, innovators, influencers, and opportunity-makers in the business world who are counting its numerous advantages. Overall, it is defined as a technique that splits up one physical server into several virtual servers and allows each one to function independently. Therefore, it is the most adopted virtualization for the above stated clear reasons.
The features and advantages of server virtualization are beyond the physical world of servers. But there are 5 major benefits of server virtualization that have stood the test of time, well at least the past 10 plus years. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 5 advantages of server virtualization.
1. Use of Few Resources & Less Hardware
Server virtualization enables businesses to significantly reduce the amount of hardware that they use. It needs few resources and less hardware. This reduces the operational costs enormously by enabling enterprises to take all of their applications and operating systems encapsulated in the virtualized environment and lay multiple instances of those systems on a given piece of hardware. Virtualization makes traditional complicated ways simple that increases performance and management control.
2. Reduced Security Concerns
Even if an enterprise is running in a virtualized environment, threats can still get in and out. This requires strong actions to secure systems and cease the incoming threats. When an organization takes a virtualized system and puts on a single set of hardware, all of the security challenges that exist for a physical server also exist for the virtualized one. Therefore, an enterprise may have to still worry about malware, exploitation, and data leakage.
Essentially, enterprises working from a centralized location and doing security for a layered number of virtual machines are ideal practices. It is so because in theory, an enterprise can eliminate threats at one go and can streamline or schedule scanning without having a single copy of virus data and can optimize caching. All these when combined provide much better security at any moment.
3. Efficient Cost Savings
To reduce IT overhead costs while having edge-equipments that need up gradations, it may be time to explore virtualization technology. By virtualizing servers, a business can reduce IT overhead cost while improving overall structure security. Virtualization reduces the physical servers and reduces the frequency stations that need to be replaced. It also gives employees the freedom to use their own devices without compromising company’s network security.
The technology built into virtualization reduces operating expenses for electricity, facility space, and IT labor. Virtualization is efficient in decreasing and maintaining time by 20 percent spent by IT staff and hence reducing the labor costs.
4. Reduced Data Center Footprint
Right now, what are most businesses using? At the moment, they are running on traditional data storage products in those virtualized environments. It means if an enterprise has four virtualized servers on a system, it needs four different storage components on each separate virtualized system. It sounds as it would take a whole lot of space.
Whether it’s sensitive business information or other essentials, more data can be moved to the virtualized environment. Statista shows that 615 exabytes are stored combined in private and public cloud data centers, while only 155 exabytes in traditional bulky storage system. In addition, the amount of data storage in virtualized environments will exponentially increase in the next 3 years.
5. Elevated Business Efficiency & Productivity
Hardware has progressed tremendously over the last few years. For enterprises that have very powerful hardware but are not using to it at its full capacity, developers have found a way to utilize such hardware better by developing a unique hardware set. Now a physical server can be divided into several dedicated virtual servers that can act as host for many applications independently. These hosts are more flexible and their usage is based on the company’s need, allowing them to pay for only what they use. It also becomes more reliable than physical servers which increase business efficiency and productivity.
Virtualizing servers is the next logical step for any organization looking to minimize IT related costs and risks. Whether it’s a 10-person small office, education computer lab, healthcare provider, distribution facility, or a global enterprise, every organization should be interested in going green with virtualization to keep more green in their pocket.
