Aaron Baldwin Information Technology Department
George Mason University
Aaron Baldwin | Title Page | Introduction | Server Issues | Virtualization Background | Benefits for Servers | Desktop Issues | Benefits for Desktops | Conclusion | Works Cited | Image References |
Virtualization Benefits for Servers
Targeting the tremendous monetary cost of servers, virtualization has provided opportunities to dramatically reduce a company’s overhead. This has worked heavily to the advantage of implementing these newer, environmentally friendly machines. The concept behind these highly improved devices is that, unlike its predecessors, they are capable of consolidating multiple systems onto one server. In essence, they are capable of significantly reducing the required number of devices. Traditionally a company would be required to host several separate servers to accommodate each of its database, ecommerce, web and business applications. This led to major expenses in not only electricity and hardware, but also in building and maintaining the massive datacenters for storage. With virtualization, the abundance of servers is able to be consolidated onto a single machine with each application running simultaneously in its own completely separate environment (Chu 2008). From here, the improved hardware utilization becomes blatantly obvious. Rather than using the previously noted 5-15%, consolidation boosts hardware usage to an astounding 85%, while simultaneously decreasing energy consumption by 80% (Kumar 2010). Adequate use of these servers could boast ratios of anywhere from 10:1 to 20:1. Servers could theoretically be reduced from forty-four million to four million, drastically reducing the overall carbon footprint. With such a staggering reduction in energy and datacenter expenses, it is easy to see how businesses are yielding returns on their virtualization investments in less than three to six months (Chu 2008). While virtualization has undoubtedly produced dramatic results in way of a datacenter’s wasted resources, its benefits are expanding to the corporate realm of networked desktops.