Virtualization is rapidly changing the way business IT operates, from small local businesses to multinational corporations. If you are reading this, chances are good that your company is already taking advantage of virtualization’s benefits.

Virtualization means that a single underlying piece of hardware, such as a server, runs multiple guest operating systems to create virtual machines, or VMs, with each of them being oblivious to the others. An administrative application, such as VMware, manages the sharing process, allocating hardware resources, memory, and CPU time to each VM as needed. And all applications look at this software construct exactly as if it were a real, physical server — even the VM thinks it’s a real server!

Virtualization makes good financial sense. It enables a single server to offer multiple capabilities that otherwise would require separate servers. It includes native high availability
features so you don’t have to use any more complex clustering tools. This ability to combine capabilities means that you spend less money on server hardware and much less time providing IT support, systems administration, and maintenance.