e-skills UK Guide

Virtual computing

Virtual Computing

Virtual computing has been seen as a niche type of IT only suitable for technical experts working within large businesses. With the maturing of the technology over the past few years virtual computing is now being looked at by small and medium sized businesses as well.

Virtual computing is a way of reducing the cost of your information technology by making best use of your hardware. Most servers in business run at a fraction of their full performance most of the time, and it makes sense to make best use of any equipment you already have. Most computer equipment has been designed to run one operating system at a time but virtualisation enables you to run many instances of one or many operating systems simultaneously therefore increasing the use of your server hardware.

Please note that virtualisation is still a fairly new approach to small business computing. Successfully installing, configuring and running a virtual infrastructure will require more IT experience than normally associated with setting up business systems. If you are in any doubt please consult a suitable IT expert.

How does virtualisation work?

The software behind virtualisation very cleverly turns your hardware server into one or more virtual servers each of which have the same attributes as a real server, including processors, memory and hard disks. Virtual servers can be loaded with software and controlled and managed as if they were a physical box sitting under your desk. Virtual servers share underlying hardware resources as effectively as possible to ensure each is able to run fast and efficiently.

How does it save money?

If you are setting up a small business you may decide to invest in some IT systems to provide email, a web server, a file server and a customer database. Dependent on the operating system software and the specific software you wish to use this may entail your purchasing 3 or 4 physical servers as the software to run one system may not be able to run another.

For example you may decide to run your email system on Microsoft Exchange Server but your database on an operating system called Linux. Even if you do not choose these operating systems if you purchase software from a third party to do a specific task in your business (such as computer aided design or computer control of machine tools) you may be compelled to use software that is not compatible with mainstream “office” based applications.

By using server virtualisation you should be able to host a lot of these systems on one hardware server as virtual computers.

Green Computing

Server virtualisation is also better for the environment as fewer physical servers are required. This reduces consumption of natural resources during manufacture as well as saving you money on electricity in the form of server power and maybe lowered air conditioning requirements. Many larger businesses are slimming down their server fleet by “virtualising” their server rooms and small businesses can stop the unnecessary purchase of additional servers by using virtualisation from day one.

Disaster recovery and virtual computing

There are some businesses that use a virtual computer setup to help manage their disaster recovery. With a virtual computer entire computer settings and configurations can be copied in one go, enabling the setup of a duplicate system a lot easier than having to install all software and settings from scratch.

Is virtual computing for your business?

Not every organisation will benefit from a virtual computer infrastructure. Here are some signs that a virtual computer environment may be useful for your business:

•   You need to run a number of different operating systems (i.e. Windows and Linux)

•   You have a reasonable technical background and understand IT systems well

•   You can see a requirement to install many servers over a short period of time (for example hosting web sites)

•   You prefer to run your own email, file storage and database systems
If on the other hand you only need a basic IT system with one or two PCs then server virtualisation is not something you should be considering at the moment.