Virtualisation in a nutshell

Why Use Server Virtualization?

There are many reasons companies and organisations are investing in server virtualisation. Some of the reasons are financially motivated, while others address technical concerns. This article outlines the main reasons companies are choosing to virtualise their environments.

Consolidation
Server virtualisation allows several servers to be consolidated onto one physical machine. This signigicantly reduces the space required by companies to physically house multiple servers. It also reduces hardware repair and operating costs. Another benefit is centralised administration, allowing you to automate day to day management tasks like maintenance and performance thus freeing up your IT resourses to focus on other tasks and projects.

Redundancy/High Availability
Creating redundant virtual servers on multiple physical machines can allow for multiple copies of the same application to run simultaneously. If one fails the other will continue operating eliminating downtime and increasing productivity. No downtime for server maintenance is necessary either. Application will continue to run on the second server while patching

Disaster Recovery
Virtualisation allows for simple on or offsite, full or partial site duplication and backup and restore options of your Virtual Machine’s for disaster recovery options.  Using native (VMWare or Hyper-V) or third party disaster recovery tools your Disaster Recovery can be automated to replicate your environment to either a secondary site or to the cloud (Disaster Recovery as a Service). Disaster recovery testing can be non-disruptive to your production enviroment.

Testing
New applications can also be installed and tested in a virtual environment without risk to your existing network. Rather than buying a dedicated testing machine, a virtual server can be created which is isolated from the rest of your network. Your production servers can be cloned to the test environment if needed to simulate a live environment with no risk.

Legacy hardware
All hardware will eventually become outdated. Expensive maintenance contracts, sourcing dated parts, hardware failures, system slowness can all be massive pain points to companies working off these legacy systems. Virtualising these systems removes all of these pain points, increases performance and provides peace of mind and long term savings.
See case studies of legacy environments Westbourne has Virtualised.

Migration
It is now possible to move a virtual server from one physical machine to another on a different network while it’s still running. Migration allows for load balancing when a host is overloaded. It also allows maintenance to be performed on the host with zero downtime. All this is done without disruption to production.

Shared Resources
Resources such as Network Bandwidth, CPU’s, hardrives and memory are shared by the Virtual Machines and can be easily increased or decreased as needed. Your whole environment is truly scalable and efficient.

Images
An image of your server can be taken at any time and restored very quickly. This is especially good when you want to make a minor change to a vm or if you need to create a baseline image for building VM’s

Email or contact us on 021-431-4310 to discuss Virtualising your environment