Enterprise Virtualization- Understanding Relevance of Key Areas

Virtualization is a highly beneficial process for reducing enterprise IT costs by allowing business of every size to enhance agility and efficiency. Virtualization enables enterprises to use a single machine for running multiple operating systems as well as applications. It also helps reduce number of servers by consolidation of hardware yet achieve greater productivity.

With virtualization technology there is simplification of the entire IT infrastructure and a relative reduction in cost maintenance. In fact virtualization can result in fifty percent reduction of total IT expenditure.

Thanks to virtualization, new applications are deployed much faster than traditional environments with up to 80 percent server usage.

Different types of virtualization

Virtualization process spans every possible component of an enterprise IT infrastructure. Here are some of the different types of virtualization.

Hardware virtualization- This type of virtualization is sought after for rapid scaling of the environment and it helps us save power usage and physical space. One can have a single server with multiple operating systems for concurrent operations withy help of hardware virtualization.

Client virtualization- Client virtualization includes application virtualization, and local as well as remote desktop virtualization.

Storage virtualization- It is achieved by separating a logical partition from the physical storage through virtual partitioning. There are different approaches adopted for storage virtualization including SAN- Storage Area Network, DAS- Direct Attached Storage, and NAS- Network Attached Storage.

Presentation virtualization- These are also referred to as terminal services. One can access remote desktop on system via a connected network. For the same reason, these are also called as Remote Desktop Services or RDS.

Enterprise virtualization and cloud environment

Virtualization and cloud environment differ in multiple aspects as virtualization is associated with physical infrastructure while a cloud environment is offered as a service. In enterprise virtualization, the initial investment may be on a higher side but can pay for itself over a longer period. Cloud services are to be paid for on the basis of subscription hence requires a continuous investment.

Enterprise virtualization- Reviewing key areas 

Whenever an enterprise virtualization has to be set up, one needs to take into account specific areas, which are considered to be key areas of virtualization.

Management of the virtualization approach

One must not adopt a casual approach to virtualization because there is a possibility of getting tempted due to its multiple advantages to add virtual servers or cloud hosting server for the given application. Decision to implement virtualization must be carefully arrived at to include every single aspect of enterprise such as applications, servers, desktops, and other components of software as well as hardware.

Monitoring the environment of virtualization

Every environment must be properly monitored including a virtualization environment. In fact, monitoring the enterprise virtualization is extremely significant due to the fact that the applications should be seamlessly available.  In order to ensure high availability of applications, one must make sure that the monitoring tools are effectively used to monitor resources. This should guarantee right time execution of the application with proper provisioning of resources it requires.

Staying away from Desktop Virtualization 

Desktop virtualization suffers from its own issues and should best be avoided since it is not a good practice. Although, desktop virtualization is not on its way out, it is preferable to choose server side virtualization over the virtualization of desktop.

Design plans for business continuity by setting up disaster recovery

Appropriate deployment of virtual environment facilitates disaster recovery. Usually the plan of disaster recovery is not part of the enterprise IT budget. However one should design innovative ideas to make sure that major events are efficiently handled by the system. Business continuity is extremely crucial for the survival of an enterprise therefore while executing plans for enterprise virtualization it is expected that the plans are aimed at ensuring high availability of systems.

Virtual data centers

Crux of virtualization lies in the fact that it runs more virtual workloads by using fewer physical systems. Management is always breathing down the neck of data center managers to ensure maximum possible utilization of available resources thereby mitigating operational costs and the overall cost of establishment. This also includes high availability and security of data center infrastructure. These are some of the common challenges being faced by data center manager in an enterprise IT infrastructure.

Adopting containment and server consolidation

In response to the growth of business, the IT infrastructure of an enterprise is also expected to grow in order to support growing needs of daily operations. This results in continuous addition of data storage and array of servers causing escalation in energy and maintenance costs. In such a scenario, the approach of consolidation of servers and containment enables excellent control over IT infrastructure spread as well as reduction in hardware and operating costs.

Virtual Lab Automation

Thanks to virtualization, it is possible to automate tasks by reducing required number of systems. Automated server provisioning can be executed with help of virtualized pool of resources.

Take away data

Enterprise virtualization is a critical area with a multitude of complexities. Virtualization of various components needs to be implemented after a careful thought process spanning entire organization.

Read More at : Seven different types of Virtualization