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Virtualisation
What is Virtualisation ?
Traditionally, as businesses expand and require more IT infrastructure, you purchased a new server, hardware support, made space for it in your machine room, found some spare UPS capacity and looked for an empty KVM port. The up-front and ongoing costs mounted up.Virtualisation changes all that. By installing virtualisation software such as VMWare or Microsoft Virtual Server, you are able to let one physical server host multiple 'virtual servers' (or 'virtual machines'). Server resources can be apportioned between the virtual machines.
Desktop virtualisation allows software evaluation and testing on multiple operating systems without additional investment in hardware. Desktop virtualisation can also be of great value in software training where it is necessary to have a variety of machine setups readily available.
VMWare
VMWare is arguably the market leader in virtualisation technology with a range of products suitable for Small Businesses up to Enterprise level.Server and Workstation tools are available (the basic ones are free to download and use). A physical-to-virtual capture tool allows a running computer to be captured and then run elsewhere as a virtual machine.
Microsoft Virtual Server
Microsoft also offer virtualisation tools for servers, workstations and physical-to-virtual capture tools. Virtual Server 2005 has now been released as a free download.Although not as high profile as VMWare has been recently, Microsoft do offer significant licencing incentives to encourage you to use their tools, such as a 4-for-1 offer on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (ie the purchase of 1 Server 2003 Enterprise Licence allows you to run 4 virtual Server 2003 Enterprice instances).
Please contact us to discuss how virtualisation could help you get more out of your IT systems.