10 reasons why you should Virtualise your physical servers.

Virtualising a Physical server is not “build a virtual machine then install the same application on it and copy across the data. The virtualisation process uses software to make a byte for byte clone of whatever is on your server’s hard disk, packaged into a bootable Virtual Machine File.

The advantages of server virtualisation are compelling; here are some of the benefits you can expect by Virtualising server infrastructure:

1.      Reduced hardware costs

Datacentres and Server Rooms contain numerous expensive “single use” physical servers with associated maintenance costs, as well they carry costs for the rental of rack space or incur electricity and cooling costs etc.

For all those “single use” servers, a significant amount of resource and capacity lies dormant in the box. When you implement a virtualised server/cloud computing approach, hardware utilisation is increased as each physical server can now hold multiple virtual machines and resource can be fully allocated between them.

Virtualisation, therefore, allows you to reduce the number of physical servers you need to run your business.

2.      Faster deployment

Server virtualisation enables system provisioning and deployment within minutes, allowing you to clone an existing virtual machine without the hours and costs normally spent procuring and installing a new physical server.

In the past, installing a physical server was a long, arduous, and expensive process. There was the lead-time to purchase and get the server in, then building the server’s OS, drivers etc. and then installing applications… before finally being able to use it.

Virtualisation is most certainly necessary for most businesses to keep pace with today’s speed of change and growth.

3.      Save space

Historically, racks were bloated with small single use servers, HA pairs and clusters with physical space often a premium… and then an acquisition goes through. Suddenly you need to home another 50u of tin and you have to pay to rent another couple of racks at your Datacentre, which of course will be 10 rows away from your existing estate…

This isn’t as much of an issue with virtual machines, however. Although they still need a physical server to exist on, VMs can be consolidated across far few Physical servers.

4.      Reduced energy costs

Physical servers require electricity to run and to cool. Consolidating the number of Physical servers reduces these costs.

5.      Simplified disaster recovery

When a disaster affects a physical server, fixing it could take hours or even days to get on-site or procure replacement parts. Perhaps the greatest benefit of server virtualisation is the capability to move a virtual machine from one server to another quickly and safely.

Backing up critical data is done quickly and effectively because your company can effortlessly create a replication site.

Most enterprise virtualisation platforms contain features to automate failover during a disaster as well as to test a disaster recovery failover.

6.      Increased efficiency

With fewer servers, your IT teams will be able to spend less time maintaining and updating the physical hardware, drivers and firmware etc. OS updates are significantly faster with Virtual reboot times – less time dedicated to maintaining the environment increases your team’s efficiency and productivity.

Faster server provisioning will also yield overall improvements in IT productivity. New servers can be spun up and deployed quickly and consistently and decommissioned hardware can often be repurposed into the pool of Hypervisor resource.

7.      No more server sprawl

Server sprawl is a common occurrence in datacentres, as new servers are added to handle new applications while older server gear either continues to handle some chores or sits unused.

With server consolidation, fewer pieces of hardware are required. This means IT can consolidate physical resources, which can yield considerable savings on maintenance contracts, power and cooling, and overall footprint.

8.      Flexibility and scalability

A virtualised infrastructure offers far more flexibility and easier scaling than a traditional environment. Virtual servers can be moved or cloned from one host to another, making hardware upgrades and performance tuning like adding more RAM or extra vCPUs a nearly effortless process. Similarly, these capabilities can be tapped to transition to a cloud service or to maintain a hybrid infrastructure that spans on-premises and cloud resources.

9.      Increased uptime

Hyper-V clustering on Shared Hardware result in significantly higher server uptime than those same servers running directly on physical hardware. VMs can be migrated off Physical Server cluster nodes while that hardware is maintained. Server failures no longer impact VMs as the cluster provides fault tolerance.

10.  Greener

When you are able to cut down on the number of physical servers you’re using, it will lead to a reduction in the amount of power being consumed. This has two green benefits:

• It reduces expenses for the business, and that money can be reinvested elsewhere
• It reduces the carbon footprint of the datacentre

Summary

Virtualisation is a powerful tool that helps relieve administrative overhead while increasing cost savings, scalability, and efficiency.

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