Virtualzation & Server Based Computing
What is Virtualization?
Virtualization is a proven software
technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally
changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was
originally designed to run only a single operating system and a single
application, but virtualization breaks that bond, making it possible to run
multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the
same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware
How Does Virtualization Work?
In essence,
virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. Use software such as
VMware ESX Server to transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an
x86-based computer-including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller-to
create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system
and applications just like a “real” computer. Multiple virtual machines
share hardware resources without interfering with each other so that you can
safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a
single computer.
What is a Virtual Infrastructure?
In essence, a
virtual infrastructure is a dynamic mapping of physical resources to business
needs. While a virtual machine represents the physical resources of a single
computer, a virtual infrastructure represents the physical resources of the
entire IT environment, aggregating x86 computers and their attached network and
storage into a unified pool of IT resources. Structurally, a virtual
infrastructure consists of the following components:
- Single-node hypervisors to enable full virtualization of each x86 computer.
- A set of virtualization-based distributed system infrastructure services such as resource management to optimize available resources among virtual machines.
- Automation solutions that provide special capabilities to optimize a particular IT process such as provisioning or disaster recovery.
By decoupling the entire software environment from its underlying hardware infrastructure, virtualization enables the aggregation of multiple servers, storage infrastructure and networks into shared pools of resources that can be delivered dynamically, securely and reliably to applications as needed. This pioneering approach enables organizations to build a computing infrastructure with high levels of utilization, availability, automation and flexibility using building blocks of inexpensive industry-standard servers.
Virtual Infrastructure Benefits
VMware has
made it possible to fully realize the enormous benefits of virtualization in
production-scale IT environments by building virtual infrastructure automation
and management capabilities around a best-in-class hypervisor. In fact, 86% of
VMware customers use virtualization in production and 43% deploy most new
production applications in virtual machines.
VMware
virtual infrastructure solutions are ideal for production environments in part
because they run on industry-standard servers and desktops and support a wide
range of operating system and application environments, as well as networking
and storage infrastructure. We have designed our solutions to function
independently of the hardware and operating system to provide customers with a
broad platform choice. As a result, our solutions provide a key integration
point for hardware and infrastructure management vendors to deliver
differentiated value that can be applied uniformly across all application and
operating system environments.
VMware customers who have adopted our virtual infrastructure solutions have reported
dramatic results, including:
- 60-80% utilization rates for x86 servers (up from 5-15% in non-virtualized PCs)
- Cost savings of more than $3,000 annually for every workload virtualized
- Ability to provision new applications in minutes instead of days or weeks
- 85% improvement in recovery time from unplanned downtime
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