Cutting Costs with Virtualization

By Crystal Henry, Project Manager at TLS.NET, Inc.

Tough economic times have business owners looking to reduce costs without losing essential elements of their business. One solution many business owners have turned to in order to cut expenses while increasing space, security and flexibility is Virtualization.

Virtualization is essentially turning your computer hardware into software. In doing so, you are maximizing the potential of your investment in a physical server, while reducing operating costs. You can virtualize the hardware resources of your server, including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller, to create a fully functional virtual machine that acts just like a "real" server.

Server hardware was originally designed to run only a single operating system, and a single application. This leads to high costs and wasted server resources. However, virtualizing these servers allows you to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same server at the same time.

For instance, instead of purchasing four separate machines and providing energy to all four, virtualization allows you to house those four servers on one physical machine. Fewer servers and hardware means reduced real estate, power and cooling requirements.

Another benefit of virtualization is the security and flexibility gained from its design. When the operating system on a physical server goes down, there isn't much you can do to get them back up and running aside from buying a new server with a new operating system. However, if the operating system on a virtual machine goes down, it is just a matter of moving files to another virtual machine on the same server and you're back in business. Virtually instantaneous recovery from unplanned issues like these will save your business money as well.

The bottom line is that virtualization is the way to get the best bang for your buck out of your server(s). It saves time, money and resources while increasing functionality, flexibility and security.

Let's do some example math on a business environment:

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