What is Virtualization? Virtualization is a way to pool a few physical servers by creating a virtual environment to accomplish the same task instead of using many individual servers.

Currently, each server has their own set Of tasks or programs to run and none of them intersects with each other, which can lead to some servers being underutilized while others are idle because no request are sent to the servers. Creating a virtual machine (VM) can reduce the physical network load by shifting network traffic to the internal virtual net.For example, the receptionist attempting to answer five incoming calls at the same time, while he mail room clerk sits by idly waiting for the employee or the postman to drop off mail before the clerk can start to distribute the mail out to the various departments. In this example, the receptionist is overwork while the mail clerk is not.

Virtualization can fix this by allowing multiple servers to operate on one physical server using virtualization technology. Virtualization creates stable computing service and is growing into the desktop and storage area networks (SANS) environment.Virtualization is usually done through hosted virtualization used by market leader VMware or hyper-visor used by Microsoft which is installed directly on the x86 server. The company will need to decide on which virtualization technology they will deploy in the datacenter. Virtualization ROI Return on Investment (ROI) is the leading reason to change the datacenter to virtualization. According to virtualization leader VMware, consolidating hardware through virtualization can reduce hardware and maintenance costs by 50 percent or more.Virtualization also increases efficiency by eliminating the need to setup a new server every time new applications are deployed, esulting in fewer technical issues and reducing routine maintenance time by an estimated two-thirds.

Costly hours lost from unplanned downtime are also reduced with a marked improvement on disaster recovery options. Securing company assets benefits from virtualization as well, with the ability to quickly move virtual machines from one host server to another”allowing quicker implementation of security patches for the hosts and less downtime for the VMS (Van Winkle, 2011).The virtualization benefit extends beyond IT department to the rest of the business by reducing operating expenses, mproving response by IT, and improving business continuity and customer service. The company can expect to increase server utilization from 18% to more than 55% overall using the latest quad-core socket server that are 20 to 50 times faster than the previous servers. Virtualization Adoption Most small and medium-sized business (SMB) IT budgets are increasing, with organizations with less than 250 employees finding the greatest increases in IT spending.Businesses with 250 to 999 employees reported a decline in IT spending; however, overall IT budgets for SMBs are growing for companies in North America.

SpiceWorks also predicts that workloads of all types will be virtualizing at an increased rate, within the next six months and that “server virtualization has still not reached its peak. ” According to the study: Server virtualization adoption continues its upward trend, jumping seven percentage points since the second half of 2012”from 65% to 72%.What is more, and an additional 8 % of respondents are planning to implement server virtualization within the next six months, which could bring the adoption total to (May, 2013). Virtualization Management The practical way to think about this is virtualization management tools will allow the IT staff to manage less hardware, increase uptime and reduce down time. Disaster recovery is built in virtualization where you can bring another server online quickly.Inventory of the virtualization environment is easily with images to bring any server back online for deployment with minimal downtime and ensure the IT management will always know the status of the virtual environment.

Instead of having forty-seven physical servers, the company could have three physical servers running sixteen virtualize servers n each physical server. If any application on the physical server cannot be run in the virtualized environment, those applications can continue to run on physical servers.In addition, IT can go back to replacing the server every three years like the company policy states, instead of yearly. Su mmary Given the benefits of virtualization over physical server, the company should look to virtualization as a way to affect ROI, while reducing power consumption, utilization server capability through consolidation, reduced administration cost and reduced downtime on the server or application and llow the company to go green in the process.