Virtualization allows businesses to consolidate hardware and physical servers while eliminating the need to buy numerous pieces of equipment to achieve their needs.
In my opinion, there is a place for virtualization in every organization. Five or six years ago, I wouldn’t have said that, due to the high cost associated with the technology. But it's not too expensive anymore.
Technology is developing so rapidly that the old way of tying an application to hardware is changing. Virtualization enables a business to have enterprise-class infrastructure at a reasonable cost.
• Consolidation: It used to be that if we had 10 applications, we were required to have 10 physical servers. Through virtualization, we can host those 10 applications on as few as two physical servers.
• Reliability: In the past, if one of these 10 servers failed, the application was unavailable until the hardware was replaced. With virtualization, if one of the two physical servers fails, the application is automatically restarted on the other physical server. One of the main advantages of virtualization is that we can craft a highly redundant system that is more efficient than what we’re accustomed to. Within minutes of a failure, you can be up and running again, without replacing the failed hardware.
Technology evolves quickly and is constantly changing. You should always ask and determine what the long-term ramifications of a technology are. Based on my research and experience, I don’t see any signs of the move toward virtualization slowing down. As I indicated in a previous article about cloud computing on DeseretNews.com, the cloud is great and provides a lot of wonderful benefits — but in reality, the cloud is built on virtualization.
I’m convinced that virtualization will evolve, because all technology evolves. I believe future advancements and innovation will revolve around and be built upon virtualization as we know it today. If people resist the cloud and virtualization, I believe they’ll fall further and further behind and have more difficulties and more expense to catch up on in the future.
