Systems virtualization
Optimise resources, improve performance and centralise the management of your systems using efficient virtualisation solutions.
Virtualization of a system, usually referred to as a server, consists of making a complete machine, with its operating system, applications, data, configuration, etc., actually run on a different physical machine, called “host”, so That the “guest”, runs on an intermediate layer.
This means that a virtual machine is for all effects, a totally independent machine, and consumes the resources that are assigned to it from the host machine.
Advantages
Server Consolidation
In organizations with many servers, it allows all servers to have ``virtually`` the same hardware, and therefore, their management is more homogeneous and predictable.
Reversal procedure before changes
It allows the machine to be produced, take a snapshot or photo of how it is, so that an installation of a patch, if it does not work correctly, allows us to back up quickly and with Minimum standstill times.
Flexible resource allocation
It is common practice to run several virtual machines on a single powerful server and dynamically allocate CPUs or memory according to each machine’s workload. Doing the same on physical machines requires uniform hardware and results in longer downtime, entailing greater costs in terms of time and effort.
Maintenance of obsolete applications
Some applications only run on older operating systems, which are not always compatible with modern hardware and pose a significant risk if they are kept in use without support. To address this, migration tools can be used to convert physical machines into virtual ones, allowing these older systems to run on modern servers with up-to-date support.
High availability solutions
In the clustering modes, it allows running virtual machines in cluster mode. In these cases, the fall of a host machine is recovered immediately, since the external requests would be served by another member of the cluster.
Contingency plans
Allows to set up a very simple contingency plan with recovery times of less than one hour, since moving a virtual machine is completely transparent and independent of the hardware.
Energy saving and environment
It allows to execute several servers in a single physical machine, with the consequent energetic saving.
Disadvantages
Performance
We could say that the performance of a virtual machine is about 10% lower, so that for CPU intensive applications and disk, may have a lower performance.
Cost
When planning for virtualisation, it is important to consider the cost of the software: licences are required for the host, for the virtualisation platform (which is sometimes included) and for each virtual operating system. Furthermore, Microsoft OEM licences cannot be used on virtual machines, as they are tied to physical hardware.