Server Virtualization and Server Consolidation Solutions for Businesses in Silicon Valley and the entire Bay Area

Virtualization essentially lets one computer do the job of multiple computers, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments. Virtual servers and virtual desktops let you host multiple operating systems and multiple applications locally and in remote locations, freeing you from physical and geographical limitations. In addition to energy savings and lower capital expenses due to more efficient use of your hardware resources, you get high availability of resources, better desktop management, increased security, and improved disaster recovery processes when you build a virtual infrastructure.

The business case for virtualization comes from the need for efficiency and the reduction of operating costs. With the support of hardware vendors and maturity of virtualization software, businesses can fully embrace the benefits of a virtualized network environment.

Issues faced by businesses today that would prompt them to migrate to a virtualized environment

• Low Infrastructure Utilization
  Typical server deployments achieve an average utilization of only 10% to 15% of total capacity, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research firm. Organizations typically run one application per server to avoid the risk of vulnerabilities in one application affecting the availability of another application on the same server.
• Increasing Physical Infrastructure Costs
  The operational costs to support growing physical infrastructure have steadily increased. Most computing infrastructure must remain operational at all times, resulting in power consumption, cooling and facilities costs that do not vary with utilization levels.
• Increasing IT Management Costs
  As computing environments become more complex, the level of specialized education and experience required for infrastructure management personnel and the associated costs of such personnel have increased. Organizations spend disproportionate time and resources on manual tasks associated with server maintenance, and thus require more personnel to complete these tasks.
• Insufficient Failover and Disaster Protection
  Organizations are increasingly affected by the downtime of critical server applications and inaccessibility of critical end user desktops. The threat of security attacks, natural disasters, health pandemics and terrorism has elevated the importance of business continuity planning for both desktops and servers.
• High Maintenance end-user desktops
  Managing and securing enterprise desktops present numerous challenges. Controlling a distributed desktop environment and enforcing management, access and security policies without impairing users’ ability to work effectively is complex and expensive. Numerous patches and upgrades must be continually applied to desktop environments to eliminate security vulnerabilities.

High-level benefits of Virtualization

1. Server Consolidation and Infrastructure Optimization
   Virtualization makes it possible to achieve significantly higher resource utilization by pooling common infrastructure resources and breaking the legacy “one application to one server” model.
2. Physical Infrastructure Cost Reduction
   With virtualization, you can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs.
3. Improved Operational Flexibility & Responsiveness
   Virtualization offers a new way of managing IT infrastructure and can help IT administrators spend less time on repetitive tasks such as provisioning, configuration, monitoring and maintenance.
4. Increased Application Availability & Improved Business Continuity
   Eliminate planned downtime and recover quickly from unplanned outages with the ability to securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service.
5. Improved Desktop Manageability & Security
   Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that end users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC

Technical benefits of Virtualization

• Compatibility: Virtual machines are compatible with all standard x86 computers
  Just like a physical computer, a virtual machine hosts its own guest operating system and applications, and has all the components found in a physical computer (motherboard, VGA card, network card controller, etc). As a result, virtual machines are completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications and device drivers, so you can use a virtual machine to run all the same software that you would run on a physical x86 computer.
• Isolation: Virtual machines are isolated from each other as if physically separated
  While virtual machines can share the physical resources of a single computer, they remain completely isolated from each other as if they were separate physical machines. If, for example, there are four virtual machines on a single physical server and one of the virtual machines crashes, the other three virtual machines remain available. Isolation is an important reason why the availability and security of applications running in a virtual environment is far superior to applications running in a traditional, non-virtualized system.
• Encapsulation: Virtual machines encapsulate a complete computing environment
  A virtual machine is essentially a software container that bundles or “encapsulates” a complete set of virtual hardware resources, as well as an operating system and all its applications, inside a software package. Encapsulation makes virtual machines incredibly portable and easy to manage. For example, you can move and copy a virtual machine from one location to another just like any other software file, or save a virtual machine on any standard data storage medium, from a pocket-sized USB flash memory card to an enterprise storage area networks (SANs).
• Hardware independence: Virtual machines run independently of underlying hardware
  Virtual machines are completely independent from their underlying physical hardware. For example, you can configure a virtual machine with virtual components (eg, CPU, network card, SCSI controller) that are completely different from the physical components that are present on the underlying hardware. Virtual machines on the same physical server can even run different kinds of operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc).
  
  When coupled with the properties of encapsulation and compatibility, hardware independence gives you the freedom to move a virtual machine from one type of x86 computer to another without making any changes to the device drivers, operating system, or applications. Hardware independence also means that you can run a heterogeneous mixture of operating systems and applications on a single physical computer.