Businesses and other organizations thinking of making a move to virtualization must confront the need to make some key decisions that will have cost and efficiency implications for years to come. One of the first matters for businesses to take into account is the level of virtualization that will be most effective in their own particular circumstances. Contrary to common belief, the term ‘virtualization’ actually encompasses a wide range of approaches to organizing data and computing resources. Hardware virtualization uses a virtualized approach to cover all elements of the computing system from the hardware all the way through to the operating system. In contrast, OS virtualization alone is a much less extensive form of the technology.
To the end-user, hardware virtualization appears to be a dedicated server even when many separate servers have been consolidated into a single one. OS virtualization, in contrast, will deploy one instance of the operating system for each server, though this approach tends to mean that it will be an identical version of the OS on each of the servers involved. IT consulting firms can offer more details on these various options and details on how they can be of use to small and medium-sized businesses that are considering virtualizing their workspaces.
Different virtualization solutions offer different sets of tools intended for management. One of the most important tools to have is one that will assist with the migration of workflow and data from a physical server to a virtual one. Most virtualization IT solutions come with tools intended to achieve faultless and efficient migration, but in some cases, companies prefer to work with third-party tools that offer additional functionality.
Other tools may be available to help analyze the current resource utilization trends on a physical server in order to predict the optimal configuration for the virtual server or servers soon to be established. This is a much less common tool to be incorporated in a standard virtualization platform software suite than is a migration tool. Businesses that want to be sure they have access to such advanced tools should work closely with an IT company such as iCorps, which can identify those virtualization packages that provide this type of functionality.
IT solutions such as virtualization are best administered through a managed services approach in which a company outsources some or all of the IT management responsibility to an IT company. Learn more, by reaching out to iCorps for a free consultation.