Virtualisation - What's it All About?

Among the leading challenges confronting businesswithout interfering with each other so that you can
owners & IT managers today is the costsafely run several operating systems and applications
effective utilisation of IT infrastructure. Driving anat the same time on a single computer. A thin layer
additional sense of urgency is the continued climateof software is inserted directly on the computer
of IT budget constraints and more stringenthardware or on a host operating system. This
regulatory requirements.software layer creates virtual machines and contains
Virtualisation can help to reduce costs, improvea virtual machine monitor that allocates hardware
efficiency and disaster recovery processes,which isresources dynamically and transparently so that
the key reason why Virtualisation is such a 'buzz'multiple operating systems can run concurrently on a
word at the moment.single physical computer without even knowing it.
Virtualisation in a NutshellTop 5 reasons to adopt Virtualisation software
Virtualisation is a software technology which- Server Consolidation and Infrastructure Optimisation:
essentially lets one computer do the job of multipleVirtualisation makes it possible to achieve significantly
computers, by sharing the resources of a singlehigher resource utilisation by pooling common
computer across multiple environments. In addition toinfrastructure resources and breaking the legacy "one
energy savings and lower capital expenses due toapplication to one server" model.
more efficient use of your hardware resources, you- Physical Infrastructure Cost Reduction: With
get high availability of resources, better desktopvirtualisation, you can reduce the number of servers
management, increased security, and improvedand related IT hardware in the data center. This
disaster recovery processes when you build a virtualleads to reductions in space, power and cooling
infrastructure.requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs.
Today's powerful computer hardware was originally- Improved Operational Flexibility &
designed to run only a single operating system and aResponsiveness: Virtualisation offers a new way of
single application, but virtualization breaks that bond,managing IT infrastructure and can help IT
making it possible to run multiple operating systemsadministrators spend less time on repetitive tasks
and multiple applications on the same computer atsuch as provisioning, configuration, monitoring and
the same time, increasing the utilisation and flexibilitymaintenance.
of hardware.- Increased Application Availability & Improved
How does Virtualisation work?Business Continuity: Eliminate planned downtime and
In essence, virtualisation lets you transform hardwarerecover quickly from unplanned outages with the
into software. Using software such as VMware ESXability to securely backup and migrate entire virtual
to transform or "virtualise" the hardware resourcesenvironments with no interruption in service.
of an x86-based computer-including the CPU, RAM,- Improved Desktop Manageability & Security:
hard disk and network controller-to create a fullyDeploy, manage and monitor secure desktop
functional virtual machine that can run its ownenvironments that end users can access locally or
operating system and applications just like a "real"remotely, with or without a network connection, on
computer.almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.
Multiple virtual machines share hardware resources