Making A Case For Virtual PCs

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While one of the benefits of

virtualization

is that it can reduce the amount of hardware customers need, system builders need not worry, because they are likely to find the reverse is actually often the case.

System builders are discovering that the processing overhead of the technology is driving hardware upgrades, especially CPUs, RAM and storage space. And as virtualization technology advances, administrators will begin to demand more from their systems and find the benefits of virtualization outweigh the costs.

For solution providers, the only downside of virtualization is unrealistic expectations. But that can be solved by properly educating customers with a simple adage: The better the hardware, the better the virtual performance.

There are several buzzwords surrounding virtualization, which only adds to the confusion around the technology. To successfully sell virtualization, solution providers will need to become familiar with terms such as hypervisor, para-virtualization, host operating systems, guest operating systems and many others.

But by putting techno-babble aside, virtualization can be broken down into the simple concept of doing more with less. In this case, "less" can be interpreted as fewer servers and PCs, and "more" can be translated into more operating systems or applications.

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Here are the benefits of virtualization in a nutshell:

• Virtualization allows users to maximize the capabilities of their PCs and servers by enabling multiple operating systems to run concurrently.

Virtualized machines, for example, can run multiple applications, each in their own isolated environment, to maximize CPU usage. They can also run legacy applications or proprietary software without impacting the performance or availability of newer applications or operating systems.

• Virtual machines are portable. A virtual environment is nothing more than a special data file (or virtual hard-disk file) run by the virtualization software. That file can be copied from one physical machine to another or duplicated and run from a removable device.

• Virtual machines can be used as part of a business continuity plan. Most of the virtualization software on the market supports "snapshot" technology, which allows a virtual machine to be quickly backed up and rolled back to a working version in case of any software or hardware failure.

• Virtualization costs next to nothing. Both Microsoft and VMware offer free virtualization products, and today's hardware should need little or no upgrading to get started.

• Virtual machines provide an ideal environment for learning new products or testing new software. Users can "mess around" with a virtual machine to see what works and what doesn't with a new software package or operating system, all without interruption of production environments. Virtual machines can be predefined with a test environment, making installation and removal of software to be tested a simple process. Users no longer have to dedicate a PC to a test environment.

Considering all that, the question that comes to mind is "Why now?" After all, virtualization has been around for decades, getting its start in the mainframe world. The plain truth is that PC technology and software tools have evolved to the point where virtualization now shows it value. Add to that the increasing cost of energy, data center space and hardware maintenance, and the value proposition of virtualization increases exponentially.

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