Virtualisation is one of the hottest trends in the IT industry – first introduced in the 1960s, now nearly 9 out of every 10 companies will have implemented virtualisation in their IT systems.  The global leader in virtual infrastructure, VMware, is used by over 100,000 organisations and leading IT firm, Escape Business Technologies, is the only Aberdeen-based company to obtain the VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) accreditation.  Robin Parkinson, Director of Escape, highlights the key benefits of virtualisation and looks at how it can have real financial and operational benefits for businesses.

Virtualisation as we know it now is where multiple virtual machines run in isolation, side by side on the same physical machine.  It can be a difficult concept to grasp but essentially it means that you can install many separate virtual servers in one single physical ‘box’.  Many applications such as data bases and mail systems are required to run in their own separate work space or server to stop any conflicts.  Generally these separate servers might only be utilised to around 10%. 

By using VMWare and consolidating these servers we can drastically reduce the number of ‘boxes’ required and maximise utilisation which in turn has massive environmental, support and cost savings.

To understand how VMware can help every business, its worthwhile looking at each of these savings in more detail

Environmental – through consolidation with VMware, a businesses energy costs for its server can by reduced by 80-90%.  Energy consumption is a critical issue and with servers running 24/7, 365 days a year, being able to reduce power consumption and therefore your carbon footbprint is a big benefit for a company. VMware estimates that virtual machines cumulatively have saved 5 billion Kilowatt hours of power while also reducing the need for cooling and space in data centers.

Reduced costs – every business wants to save money and although VMware can be a significant initial expense for a company, a return of investment is estimated within 3-6 months of installation. Savings include reducing office space required to store multiple servers, less hardware and management costs and reduced power consumption. Both planned and unplanned downtime will be cut meaning that your business can continue to function as close to 24/7 as possible. Adding to and refreshing hardware can result in hours of man power but with VMware, these are significantly reduced allowing resources to be reallocated to other business tasks. 

Disaster recovery – In a virtual environment, the hardware platform and driver dependency becomes irrelevant meaning that you can effectively restore virtual servers easily and quickly, on any available ‘box’. Coupled with high availability tools mean that server downtime can virtually be a thing of the past.

Assisting growth and upgrades - Virtualisation really comes into its own when your organisation is going through a period of growth, acquisition or undertaking a major system upgrade.  Using tools like physical to virtual migration you can effectively copy any physical server and store them in your virtual environment.

When a server exists virtually you can make an exact copy of it and perform any system upgrades.  This system can then be tested offline and when proved successful can be rolled out for everyone to use eliminating possible downtime or unknown user issues.
VMware is the fastest growing software firm in the world – Escape is a VIP Enterprise Partner and VAC, providing VMware expertise to businesses globally.