What are the Benefits of Virtualisation?

Many IT organisations have a tendency to use servers that are inefficiently utilised for only a small percentage of their operating capacity. This occurs mainly due to these organisations, dedicating their physical server exclusively to a specific type of application. You don’t need to be an IT expert to understand that this kind of mechanism is highly inefficient, due to a large amount of processing power that is being unused.

This is where virtualisation comes in. Virtualisation is the process of using a software to create virtual machines from one unit of physical hardware. These virtual machines are basically computing systems that have their own operating systems and can run applications, while drawing power from a single physical server unit. This enables a higher efficiency, when it comes to the usage of the existing physical computer hardware.

Here are five benefits of virtualisation.

1.Reduce Costs

As mentioned earlier, it is highly inefficient to use a single physical server to run a single set of applications, due to the fact that the physical server can be transformed into multiple virtual machines. Since the virtual machines can maintain a difference in operating systems, while also being able to manage varying applications, it can have a level of consolidation, which is significantly more cost effective.

2. Disaster Recovery

Normally, when a physical server faces a disaster, the amount of time it would take to fix or replace the physical server is varied. Sometimes it takes hours, or sometimes it takes entire days, during which any work that is expected of the physical server goes into downtime. However, when your environment is virtualised, the recovery process for the virtual machines, only takes a few minutes.
Furthermore, the virtual machine can be replicated or cloned, despite being affected. This enables the environment to be highly resilient and maintains business continuity, without any downtime.

3. Increased Productivity

Having fewer physical servers, frees up your IT team to focus on a variety of different tasks rather than spending all of their time maintaining the physical hardware and infrastructure.
All the virtual machines on the server are susceptible to installations, updates, and do not require a laborious and tedious process of having these updates, applied on a server by server basis.

4. Testing

The most useful thing about virtual machines, is that they can be immediately created while significantly having zero impact on the production environment. The greatest benefit that comes from cloning a virtual machine is the freedom to turn it into a complete test environment, which is highly beneficial for software companies, allowing them to test the speed and efficiency of an application without having to block an entire physical server for the same.

5. Lower Carbon Footprint

It goes without saying that physical servers have contributed significantly to the carbon footprint of many organisations. However, when using virtual machines, the data center’s carbon footprint is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the business does not need to invest in multiple physical servers, allowing that money to be reinvested in more green opportunities.