Technology
Issue No. 44 - December/January 2008
Virtualisation makes less mean more
Opening an office in Adelaide at the end of 2007, system virtualisation specialist VMware now has three full-time staff and more than 60 partners servicing SA. System virtualisation makes individual machines part of a network that shares software, rather loading programs on individual stations.
“Virtualisation lets one computer do the job of multiple computers, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments,” says VMware’s Jeremy Poon.
“Today’s powerful x86 computer server hardware was originally designed to run only a single operating system and a single application, but virtualisation breaks the operating system bond with the hardware, making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time.
“Whether an organisation has 10 computers or 100, they are typically only 5% to 15% utilised. This is due to the fact that computing power is increasing dramatically each year; however, applications can’t make use of all of that available power. VMware makes this possible.
“In addition to energy savings and lower capital expenses, organisations get high availability of resources, better desktop management, increased security, and improved disaster recovery processes from
a virtual infrastructure.”
Virtualisation security depends on “safe partitioning” to direct traffic in the virtual network. It’s not easy to achieve and VMware technology is in demand.
Jeremy says once implemented, virtualization allows users to streamline and automate IT processes, improving productivity.
“Users can reduce energy costs by using less hardware without affecting service levels or reliability,” Jeremy says.
“They can dynamically and intelligently power down unneeded servers without affecting end users.”
A virtual network and individual workers’ ‘virtual
machines’ can run on almost any current Intel or AM...
