VANTAGEPOINT
Guest commentary from industry sources
A Case for Virtualization
Greater efficiency, increased flexibility and lower costs are but a
few of the benefits of server-based computing. By Ryan Pope
With as much at- tention as it’s re- ceived recently, the term “virtu- alization” remains undefined in the minds of many.
Despite the IT-focused terminology, the
virtualization concept offers many practical benefits to IT managers looking for
cost savings, increased efficiency and
fewer administration headaches.
Desktop virtualization involves separating the user’s desktop experience from
their physical machine, with users instead accessing applications and personal
desktops from a datacenter, either locally
or from remote locations. Users’ applications are thus deployed, managed, supported and executed from the datacenter’s server farm, rather than from
individual client machines. By removing
the processing load from individual machines, a server-based computing (SBC)
network solves many fundamental problems users face when running applications from individual machines.
As all data processing is conducted
from the datacenter, managers of SBC
networks need only focus on the man-
agement of their datacenter’s server farm.
With centralized management in place,
hardware and software upgrades, appli-
cation settings, technical support, storage
and data backup are made significantly
easier for administrators. Hardware also
plays a more flexible role; since individ-
ual machines are simply transmitting
datacenter output, efficient, low-cost
hardware can replace heavy, inefficient
“fat client” machines, streamlining sys-
tem operation and offering significant
savings for IT budgets.
BENEFITS
With all core applications accessed
through a centrally managed datacenter,
administrators can easily deploy, manage
and support applications much more
easily from a single point, rather than
tracking application use on many individual operating systems. Ease of management provides for secure and easy-to-track application and significant time
savings, as IT managers need only check
their datacenter rather than hundreds of
desktops for settings changes.
By harnessing the processing power
of their datacenter rather than individual machines, users can access their personal desktop and core applications
from any type of client device, including outdated hardware or small, lean
“thin client” devices. Device independence can allow administrators to continue using legacy hardware that would
ordinarily have to be replaced, offering
significant cost savings in the process,
or switch to small energy-efficient devices that would be unable to function
as stand-alone desktops, increasing network efficiency.
In allowing individual machines a di-
rect network connection to the datacen-
ter, users can tap these connections to
access their applications from anywhere
with an Internet connection. Productiv-
ity can therefore be improved by allow-
ing users access to key applications re-
gardless of their location or whether
their physical desktop is operational.
hancing hundreds of individual machines can prove daunting for company
IT staff.
By focusing server resources in the
datacenter, server performance can be
optimized using resource-based load-balancing technology, assigning applica-tion-processing jobs to hardware with
most available resources. Failover settings
can also be established to ensure that,
even in the event of server failure, other
servers can instantly step in to handle
heavy processing loads.
SAVINGS
Moreover, by using datacenter-installed
applications rather than their own personal copy, firms typically need a much
smaller number of licenses in an SBC
network, many times reducing the network’s total cost of ownership (TCO) to
a fraction of the typical cost.
For more about desktop virtualization, search “Revenge
of the Thin Client” at www.insurancenetworking.com.
Upgrades for users’ machines are
made simple, as when upgrades or
patches are implemented for datacenter
applications, users can access updated
applications immediately, avoiding the
time-intensive process of installing
patches and upgrades to each machine
individually.
Additional capacity can be easily add-
ed in a datacenter-focused network, sim-
ply by enhancing the size and speed of
the datacenter. In contrast, physically en-
It’s tempting to peg so many benefits
as helping a firm’s IT operations alone;
yet, server-based computing benefits
typically flow out to enhance company
operations as a whole. Choosing server-
based computing solutions begins re-
warding companies and organizations
immediately, making them efficient and
competitive in an uncertain economic
environment. INN
