VMware Technology

Virtualization

Virtualize for Efficiency, Higher Availability and Lower Costs

Virtualization is the single most effective way to reduce IT expenses while boosting efficiency and agility—not just for large enterprises, but for small and midsize businesses too.

VMware virtualization lets you:

Run multiple operating systems and applications on a single server.
Consolidate hardware to get vastly higher productivity from fewer servers.
Save 50 percent or more on overall IT costs.
Speed up and simplify IT management, maintenance, and the deployment of new applications.

Virtualization Advantages

By running multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical server, virtualization lets you

Reduce costs while increasing the efficiency and utilization of your existing x86 hardware.
Reduce capital and operating costs. Server consolidation lets you get more out of your existing hardware by running multiple virtual machines (VM) on a single physical server. Fewer servers means lower capital and operating costs. For the most cost savings, make sure you go with a virtualization solution that has the highest VM density per host.
Deliver high application availability. Integrated availability and fault tolerance protects all your virtualized applications. Should a node or server ever fail, all its VMs are automatically restarted or continued on another machine, with no downtime or data loss?
Improve business continuity. Virtualization makes it easier to survive unplanned potential IT disasters. You can move VMs from one server to another in a different location.
Increase IT productivity. Streamlined and automated management tasks mean you’ll spend less time on maintenance and more time on innovation.
Improve responsiveness. Virtualization lets your business scale rapidly because you can deploy desktops, applications and servers quickly and flexibly.

How Virtualization Works

What is a Virtual Machine?

The heart of virtualization is the “virtual machine” (VM), a tightly isolated software container with an operating system and application inside. Because each virtual machine is completely separate and independent, many of them can run simultaneously on a single computer. A thin layer of software called a hypervisor decouples the virtual machines from the host and dynamically allocates computing resources to each virtual machine as needed.

This architecture redefines your computing equation and delivers:

Many applications on each server. As each virtual machine encapsulates an entire machine, many applications and operating systems can run on a single host at the same time.

Maximum server utilization, minimum server count. Every physical machine is used to its full capacity, allowing you to significantly reduce costs by deploying fewer servers overall.

Faster, easier application and resource provisioning. As self-contained software files, virtual machines can be manipulated with copy-and-paste ease. Virtual machines can even be transferred from one physical server to another while running, via a process known as live migration. You can also virtualize business-critical apps to improve performance, reliability, scalability and reduce costs.

Levels of Virtualization

Server Consolidation

Virtualizing one or two servers is just the beginning. The next step is to aggregate a server cluster into a single consolidated resource. For example, instead of 20 servers running at 15 percent of capacity each, you can reduce your hardware count—and associated costs—to four servers, each performing at 80 percent.

Desktop Virtualization

VMware enables you to deliver secure virtual desktops as a managed service for remote and branch office employees. Our virtual desktop solutions increase business flexibility, simplify management and reduce your costs.

Software-Defined Data Center

Ultimately, you can attain the full efficiency and agility of cloud computing by virtualizing, pooling and automating all data center resources—servers, storage, networking, security and availability—and tying everything together with policy-based provisioning and automated operations management. The result is a Software-Defined Data Center where:

Capacity expands and contracts as needed.
Applications can be provisioned on-demand.
Every application is assured of the right levels of performance, compliance and security.
IT can shift resources and budget away from infrastructure management and maintenance, toward creating innovations that give your company an edge.