Understanding Server Virtualization

Every company is continuously looking new ways to become more efficient in terms of daily operations and the technology they use for business. When it comes to organizing internal resources and managing internal computer networks and servers, many Canadian organizations are now using the process known as server virtualization.

Server virtualization is the process of disguising the actual make up of a company’s internal server resources from users who have access to these servers. This process masks the actual make up of an organizations server so user cannot see:

• The number of servers
• The identity of physical servers
• The number and identity of processors
• The number of operating systems on the server

Server virtualization is carried out by the company’s server administrator or an IT manager through the use of virtualization software. This software applications main function is to separate a physical server into a number of sub servers and create numerous virtual environments that are isolated from each other.

These virtual environments are commonly referred to as virtual private servers and are one component of a more complex and far reaching virtualization trend that many Canadian organizations are implementing into their IT strategy.

The main goal of virtualization as a whole, which encompasses the virtualization of networks and storage, is to have your companies system manage itself through what is called autonomic computing. Therefore, the goal of this approach is to develop computer systems that can essentially operate themselves at a high level with the complexity and make-up of the system remaining unknown to system users.

Canadian organizations can approach server virtualization in one of three ways:

1. The virtual machine model: This approach enables the administrator to create guests using various operating systems without the guest knowing the host OS.
2. The para-virtual machine model: This model modifies the guest OS code through a process called porting. Similarly to virtual machines, they are capable of running many operating systems. Virtualization at the OS level
3. Virtualization at the OS layer: This works different in the other two models in the sense that it is not based on a guest/host model. This model runs on one operating system and outsources OS functionality to the guests.

There are four main features of server virtualization

1. Partitioning: This allows many virtual servers to operate on one physical server simultaneously
2. Isolation: The virtual servers are separated and work in isolation of one another. In this sense, one server does not affect the operations of the other servers.
3. Encapsulation: All information present on the virtual servers is saved in an appropriate file format
4. Hardware independence: Virtual servers run the same post migration to numerous hardware platforms.

Server virtualization is becoming commonplace in many organizations IT strategic plan because if offers many benefits. They include:

 

• A more efficient use of existing server resources

 

 

• A reduction in the number of physical servers, which results in the reduction of server maintenance costs associated with its hardware components.

 

 

• An improvement in server availability

 

 

• The ability to help with testing, development, and disaster recovery

 

 

• A centralization of the server administration

 

 

• They create more efficient space utilization

 

 

• You can increase the speed of server deployment

 

 

• Overall operating costs are reduced with the implementation of virtualization

 

 

• It stabilizes company servers and help reduce downtime

 

 

• They help to improve the overall security of your servers