streamline project management with collaborative tools

Virtual systems are software-based emulations of computer systems that operate on the top of physical hardware. They can bring a variety of advantages for your business, including IT efficiency and cost savings.

Virtual machines can be used to test new software or deploy Wikis and Jabber IM, and also to create backup images of the current system to recover faster from a disaster. VMs can be replicated or transferred to other physical servers in high availability configurations, reducing downtime.

The ability to virtualize multiple systems allows for significant reduction in server energy, hardware and maintenance costs. IT staff can spend less time performing maintenance tasks, such as updating software, as the virtual infrastructure is controlled by a central platform. This increased efficiency will aid your team in focusing on projects that will propel your business forward.

Improved Data Security and Disaster Recovery

VMs are hardware-independent, meaning that they can be moved from one physical server to another just as easily as moving files on your desktop or laptop. This is beneficial in situations where the company that developed an older piece of software leaves business or if it’s no longer supported by the original manufacturer of the equipment.

The type of hypervisor that is used in a virtual environment could determine the effectiveness of its management. A bare-metal virtualization hypervisor, such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V or Oracle VM Virtualization allows for greater control and autonomy with the host operating system. On the other side, a hosted hypervisor such as KVM (built in the Linux kernel) passes VM requests through the host OS to process which could slow down VM performance.