Virtualization has become a household word among IT professionals these days, and certainly has come a long way since VMWare launched ESX Server in 2001! Despite that, many busy entrepreneurs have yet to migrate to the virtual world: to see the value in moving their applications from the old physical server model, to virtual workloads. That begs the question: Why?
Well, that question might be answered with the story of a small, 10-person law client running a single Microsoft SBS server. It does what SBS is supposed to do – consolidates file/print, email and database services and a relatively inexpensive cost at a low cost of ownership to a firm with no in-house IT expertise. What would virtualizing that server bring to the table for this client?
The answer, lies in a key benefit of virtualization: Disaster recovery and business continuity. What happens when this 5-year-old server fails? Or when this client tries to restore from backup (if they are lucky, and prepared enough to have a current backup of the server) to new hardware? Rarely do these restorations go off without a hitch. Turning the physical server OS and applications into a virtual workload gives you the ability to copy a folder containing a few files from one location – say, the server itself – to an external hard drive or USB drive for offsite storage. It gives you an uncomplicated way to back up on a regular basis.
While this might be the most obvious benefit for these business owners, it is by no means the only one. What if this same small firm wanted to invest a little bit more money – say, in a second server. Virtualization would allow for even more business continuity by providing a seamless way to move a running server from one physical machine to the next in order to allow hardware maintenance to be performed. Or what if this client wanted to run more than one operating system or MS server? With a small investment in virtualization, a single physical machine can support several independent, virtualized operating systems without wasting valuable computing resources.
The benefits of virtualization grow as customers adopt this model of computing – exponentially as the size of the customer grows. Let BSA Data Solutions show you how! It’s not too late!
