The tech world is always evolving and the way of doing things has always been volatile in the digital world; what is “in fashion” today will quickly drop out of favor in a short while. You and your business should therefore make it a point to keep updating the software and hardware you use as newer versions are released.
Virtualization is hardly a new technology, but amazingly, many business and IT managers still prefer to do things the old way: with servers and cables running around the premises. They would rather have their data stored in boxes that they can see, touch and – quite mistakenly – think they can do a better job of protecting.
The concept of digitizing servers and, worse, handing administrative control of them over to third-party entities is still horrifying to them.
But that needn’t be. Let us look at how virtualizing your data center can be an advantage to your business:
- Run Your Old Applications Forever: every business has that old application that works perfectly and that everyone is quiet fond of. The only problem is that the support and warranty for said application ran out a long time ago. You and your business have too much riding on its continued performance as there is too much data stored on it to let it crash.
And so, what do you do when you have to make that move into the present century? You might try to have all the data extracted and loaded into a new application and hope it all works as it is supposed to. Of course, there is a chance that you won’t succeed, your staff won’t be able to (or like) using the new application or there is the fact that it will almost surely be an expensive venture.
But, with virtualization, you can encompass your precious application in its own cocoon and keep it running forever and a day – cheaply, it should be added.
- Full Server Utilization: the problem with owning several servers is that there is a high chance you aren’t utilizing them 100%; one server might be running at full capacity while the other one sits idle. You can’t bring them together because they have different operating systems.
With virtualization, you can bring all your applications under one roof – irrespective of their operating system requirements – as long as you have one powerful server that can meet the processing requirements. This way, you won’t have any server space wastage.
This brings us to…
- Cost Saving: you will no longer be wasting money on the upkeep of several servers – no money spent on server rooms, admin staff, electricity and physical security means you save quite a bundle. You don’t need to keep stock or replacement parts for servers and all other peripheral devices.
Moving your data center to a virtual server cuts your IT budget drastically – something that could help boost your small business’ finances.
- Better Disaster Recovery: restoring your data in case of a server crash is much easier when it comes to virtual servers. For one thing, you only have one server to back up and restore data for. Compared to handling the back up of multiple physical servers, virtualization allows you to do backups by simply taking digital snapshots of your virtual servers while they sit on the one server.
It should be noted that a whole business’ data infrastructure can be hosted in its entirety on one server, thus making it easier for data backup and recovery: the digital footprint is small and so is the data backup.
- Anything Goes: if there is one thing that keeps most IT managers up at night it is having to manage various, incompatible operating systems and trying to find a way to make it all get along smoothly.
Well, with a virtual server, there is no such thing as incompatibility. You can have as many operating system requirements (even two of the same with slightly varying configurations) and your virtual server can have it all up and running side-by-side without any fuss. Windows OS will run right along Linux and your applications (and your users/clients) won’t notice anything different. To them, it is like there are two separate servers, as usual.
- Better Connectivity: do you have applications that share data or feed one another? Well, in the old days the only way you could have them interact with one another is by physically having them read data from their respective servers. Needless to say, this comes with its own risks communication failure due to incompatibility, network lag, dropping of connectivity in its entirety because a rat chewed through your cable, and a whole lot more – it was heavily dependent on physical communication methods.
With both, or all, your applications sitting on one server you won’t have to worry about any of these issues; they will have the best possible connection – the shortest line between them.
Virtualization can only improve your business’ performance. And so, the sooner you adopt and embrace it, the better it will be for your business.
