Virtual systems are software-based versions of computer systems that operate on top of physical hardware. They can provide many advantages to your company including IT efficiency and cost savings.
Virtual machines are an excellent way to test new software, test Wikis or Jabber IM services and create backup images of access a step-by-step guide on data room document checklist for secure sharing your existing system for quicker recovery in the event of a natural disaster. VMs can also be replicated and migrated between physical servers for high availability configurations that minimize downtime.
The ability to virtualize multiple systems enables significant reductions in server equipment, energy and maintenance costs. IT teams are able to spend less time working on maintenance tasks such as deploying software updates because the entire virtual infrastructure is controlled by a central platform. This efficiency boost allows your team to focus on strategic projects that improve the performance of your business.
Improved Data Security and Disaster Recovery
VMs are hardware-independent, meaning that they can be moved from one physical server to another just as easily as moving files on your desktop or laptop. This is helpful in situations where the company that developed an older piece of software goes out of business or if it’s not supported anymore by the original manufacturer of the equipment.
The type of hypervisor that is used in a virtualized system can affect the management of the virtualized environment. A bare-metal hypervisor, such as VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V, provides more control and independence from the host operating system. A hypervisor that is hosted, such as KVM, (built into Linux kernel) allows VM requests to the host OS which can affect VM performance.