Virtualization for Better ROI
Re-building & configuring a typical server can take days of expensive IT staff time. But with virtualization, the same process can happen in minutes, saving your company thousands of dollars. Here’s how it works.
Real Hardware, Real Machines
Real hardware is exactly what it sounds like. Real hardware is a PC or server that you purchase from a vendor like Dell, Compaq, or IBM. You can touch it, feel it, hear it.
Virtual Machine: Like The Matrix
A virtual machine exists only in software. The operating system running on a virtual machine “thinks” it’s running on real hardware. But it’s not.
Those of you who have seen the movie The Matrix will recall that the characters had no idea that their world was unreal. The people lived in a virtual world that only existed on computers. Virtualization software is less advanced than The Matrix, but the idea is the same. A virtual machine only exists in software, but the software doesn’t know it’s running on a virtual machine.
Virtualization Example
The desktop in the image is running three virtual machines at once: Windows XP™, Windows Vista™, and Linux. All three are running within the Parallels virtualization software on Mac OS X. The machines can communicate with each other (and other machines on the Internet) as if they were running on actual hardware. Wisdom creates virtual machines for testing purposes, and our clients use the technology for rapid recovery and flexibility.
Why Bother With Virtualization?
In a word: Flexibility. The first time your staff creates a virtual machine, there’s no time savings. To reap the flexibilty benefits of virtualization, the installer must create a copy (aka an image) of the vitual machine and store it in a safe place.
Then, if something bad happens to the virtual machine, you can shut it down, delete it, recreate it from the stored image, and start everything up again. Depending on the size of the machine and the speed of the hardware, a virtual machine can be restored in fifteen minutes.
Limitations of Virtualization
Every technology has limitations. While Wisdom has successfully run virtual machines in many successful situations, one test failed.
We were testing a specialized software package on a virtual Windows XP machine when the software refused to run. We scratched our heads, and then we smiled. This particular package requires a “dongle”, a hardware device designed to prevent software piracy. The dongle contains an encryption key and it attaches to a parallel port or universal serial bus (USB) port on the machine where the software is run. When the protected software starts, it looks for the dongle to verify that it’s running on the machine it was purchased for. No dongle, no software.
The software failed because it was looking for a dongle on a parallel port. Since we running the virtual machine on a Mac, and since Macs don’t use parallel ports, the software refused to start. Re-installing the software on a standard desktop machine with a proper parallel port (and dongle) solved the problem.
Planning Required, Benefits Harvested
With proper planning, virtualization yields an attractive ROI for most IT departments.