What Is Virtualisation?

Virtualisation has become an integral and incredibly useful component of Cloud Computing.

The concept of Application Virtualisation and Server Virtualisation in particular, is a relatively simple one that has efficiency as its main advantage. Many physical servers can be consolidated onto one physical machine whilst still operating as separate servers. These separate servers housed on the one machine would then become virtual servers.

Virtualisation can dramatically reduce the amount of hardware and cost involved in multi server solutions. As well as the obvious implications on power bills, hardware maintenance costs, and physical space in office locations there are clear advantages to a business in other areas.

Downtime in the event of failure of a virtual server is greatly reduced.
The process of Virtualisation allows duplicate images of servers to be made quickly and easily. In a similar fashion to RAID configurations that protect your data by mirroring it across drives, Virtualisation ensures that your data is not lost if it goes down. One of these duplicate images can be up and running in minutes with exact and up to date data and applications ready to use.

Server Virtualisation also makes it a simpler and faster process to add new applications that would traditionally require a physical server. This process would historically take months to plan for and integrate into your existing network with new hardware being purchased etc. For this purpose Virtualisation makes the process simpler; there is no capital hardware cost, less time until the application is live, less disruption to your network, and much more flexibility in terms of the applications you can then use.