Virtualisation is becoming very popular in the UK and often a must for many businesses. The increasing popularity of Virtualisation is primarily based on the benefits it provides to a business from increased up-time and instant capacity to enhanced productivity and improved disaster recovery.
Virtualisation offers the capacity for companies to use their existing resources efficiently whilst lowering the overall costs that comes from maintaining servers.
People confuse virtualisation with other forms of technology such as cloud computing. virtualisation is the process of creating a “virtual” version of something that is real within a company’s infrastructure.
Multiple operating systems (OS) and applications run on the same server at the same time, rather than one server running one operating system.
Confused ….
Imagine a large server being cut into pieces. The server then imitates multiple servers on the network but it is one. This offers the capacity for companies to use their existing resources efficiently whilst lowering the overall costs that comes from maintaining servers.
Application virtualisation. Allows use of an application, from a remotely located server, which stores all its personal information and features. Technically, the application is not installed, but appears as if it is.
Desktop virtualisation The OS is remotely stored on a server in the data center, allowing the user to then access their desktop virtually, from any location.
User virtualisation like desktop, but allows users a fully personalised virtual desktop when not connected to the company network. Users can log into their “desktop” from all devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Storage virtualisation is the process of grouping the physical storage from multiple network storage devices so that it acts as if it’s on one storage device.
Hardware (assisted) virtualisation uses one processor to act as if it were several different processors. Users can run different operating systems on the same hardware, or more than one user can use the processor at the same time.