Virtualisation – more than just a passing phase
Virtualisation might be the latest buzzword, but the trend of optimising your available hardware without having to compromise the platform you decide on is not new. IBM and other mainframe companies have been doing this for years.
This trend is now gaining pace in the PC server market in the face of tightening IT budgets, as companies try to curb IT acquisition and licensing costs, and in response to growing global pressure to find more energy-efficient ways of working. All great inventions and adoption of cutting-edge innovation is born out of necessity.
Using virtual machine (VM) technology, a virtual environment that replicates the underlying hardware can be created so that software can be run on a virtual machine in the same way as it would on a physical one. In simple terms, virtualisation is a method of running multiple independent virtual systems on a single physical resource.
Therein lies the cost-cutting potential of virtualisation. Instead of having separate servers running mission-critical systems, leaving valuable CPU and RAM resources lying idle most of the time, more applications can be run off a single resource so you get more out of your existing infrastructure. And because CPU utilisation is optimised, it takes less electricity, and less money, to power your IT system.
South Africa is not lagging too far behind other countries when it comes to virtualisation and there appears to be a keen interest in these technologies amongst local businesses.
The technologies are easy enough to implement and they are not reliant on bandwidth, which is notoriously poor in SA, so it is easy for us to stay on a par with the rest of the world.
There is however a marked difference between virtualisation and consolidation. A number of companies promote themselves as virtualisation technology companies but then only focus on the consolidation of the products in the operating system environment.
That’s why there’s often confusion between consolidation and virtualisation. In a sense, this is a ‘virtual’ way to think of your business tools but it is not true virtualisation.
Consolidation, or what is also termed as operating system virtualisation, is the segmentation of a single operating system, allowing business tools to run separately on that operating system without interference.
This allows users to run a large number of business tools in a single operating system environment such as Windows, Solaris or any one of the hundreds of Linux distributions available.
True virtualisation is when software allows users to segment hardware — not just operating systems — allowing users to install different operating systems with their individual business tools separately on virtual servers which run from a single physical resource. It’s important for companies to know the difference!
Because virtualisation is relatively new and unchartered territory for most SA companies, it is easy to get blind-sided by marketing speak.
Ultimately, virtual machine technology should deliver and work as advertised, and the only way to guarantee that the technology will deliver on the vendor’s promises is to do a proper proof of concept.
Companies should evaluate virtualisation technologies based on their merits and choose a solution that fits their individual business requirements, has all the necessary support and is, above all else, reliable.
Engineer-IT
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