2010, the Age for Virtualization

How important is virtualization? I read an article by Gartner Group telling us that virtualization will rule the I.T. world as early as 2010. It looks like it’s already here but are we using it? How do we benefit from it then?

Virtualization means software implementation of different services in one single physical box. It just means, IT departments need not invest anymore on several physical servers just to address different services.

Long time ago when I was still working in the MIS department of a bank, data is too critical that we have to plan well. Additionally speed is important for bank branches to make a request for certain data at their end. We’ve been talking about heavily of client/server setup then followed with the idea of business logic in the middle to handle requests before it goes to the back end servers to offload it from heavy failing requests.

Technology infrastructure has evolved so fast that these days the “in” thing is to go for virtualization. Whenever you hear someone from your tech group discussing about virtual machines then your company may have started with it already.

Windows 7 is ready for virtualization. It’s already built in. Other operating systems can accommodate installation and setup of client based virtualization like the free Virtual PC and the not so free VMWare. So what is exactly virtualization?

Virtualization will save a company lots of $$$ amount. Any services that are related can be hosted in one box; virtualization is possible as opposed to lots of physical servers to host each of these services. Long time ago, a computer serving as a print server, file server, at the same time a client computer will definitely crawl for it is handling all these services. The ideal setup as always is to have one physical server for one service.  Costly since we’re talking of three dedicated computers to provide the abovementioned. This scenario connotes the idea of N-tier setup where N could mean numerous or infinite number of machines to address the services need to be in placed in the company’s network.

These days, this is not the ideal setup anymore. Let’s go green by doing virtualization. With company’s trying to cut on electric bills, virtualization will definitely be the key thru consolidation of various services into a single server. Gartner says in many cases, a virtual machine running means one less physical machine in operation. Cool huh?!?!

Concern by many now is, are we saying HP, Dell and other known computer vendors will lose market for physical servers? Not really for as long as these IT vendor giants will start building heavy duty boxes to handle the load then they can still make money. So it’s a win-win scenario if in case.

For those who want to practice on virtualization, try to download the Virtual PC 2004 or 2007 from the Microsoft website, it’s free. The only thing that is not free of course are the software and operating system that will run inside that virtual machine box. If you just want to try it, trial versions of software you can get will also work in it.

Any questions on your virtual machine setup, e-mail me at cramirez@microtrain.net.