Application and Benefits
Clearly, one benefit of this technology is that if your network has multiple servers, you can run the same infrastructure on a fraction of the hardware.
In fact, in most cases, the number of virtual machines that you can fit on one physical server ranges between 10:1 and 25:1. So, imagine taking 100 physical servers and consolidating them down to 8 (~12:1).
Other benefits of virtualization include:
High Availability – In the event that a single VMware host should fail, ESX will automatically restart the VMs that were on that host, on another VMware server.
vMotion - This feature allows you to move one virtual server (for example an Exchange server) from one physical box to another without shutting it down! That’s right, your users will never know that it happened. This means that you can:
- Perform live server migrations with zero downtime, undetectable to the user.
- Perform hardware maintenance without scheduling downtime and disrupting business operations.
- Proactively move virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers.
- Enable dynamic load balancing across all server resources.
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) – DRS leverages VMotion to automatically move your virtual machines around your available hosts. This improves performance by load balancing, and it allows your hosts to respond to increased traffic and demands on individual virtual machines.
In addition to the features above, vSphere has a host of other technologies designed to increase uptime, simplify management, ease scalability, and simplify the data center.
Of course, the benefits of virtualization don’t end there. Once you are virtualized you can drastically simplify your disaster recovery. Most customers that virtualize deploy a DR scheme within 18 months of their initial virtualization initiative. Recovery times for Virtual DR can most commonly be measured in MINUTES, rather than hours or days.