Server virtualization offers improved system utilization, workload flexibility, and other advantages for the data center. Today, many businesses have already adopted virtualization, but virtualization can still fail in some ways. Practices and policies that arise from virtualization can waste resources and drive administrators to give up.

Powering your IT equipment costs money, but how much will you actually spend? If you have no idea, you’re in for a treat. Here are four questions you need to ask yourself before considering virtualization. 

Studies have shown that over 70% of IT budgets go to “keeping the lights on.

Whether your business is hit with a brief power outage or by a natural disaster, any kind of interruption to your organization’s productivity cuts into your profits. A business continuity plan (BCP) is critical to ensuring your organization stays open.

Hypervisors have changed the game of cybersecurity. They provide unmatched cyber protection for your data as they keep it in the cloud. However, hypervisors still have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Find out how their weak points can be addressed.

If you’re just starting on virtualization, you need to know it’s not just plug-and-play. You need to understand your IT environment, and that’s not something that’s immediately easy to grasp. If you’re a beginner, better follow this virtualization guide.

Ransomware like CryptoLocker and WannaCry has become more sophisticated over the years. No wonder that more ransomware attacks are expected this year. To fend off these threats, turn to virtualized disaster recovery (DR) solutions. They’re your best defense against ransomware.

The affordability of cloud computing and virtualization are helping small businesses do away with in-house IT hardware. Virtual containers are the next step in that trend. They come with plenty of benefits and are becoming easier to manage every day.

The age-old proverb “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” is especially relevant when budgeting for IT services. Virtualization is one such way to “skin the cat,” as it helps businesses achieve their operational needs without having to incur as much expense as it traditionally would.

Virtualization and cloud computing are sometimes mistaken as one and the same, causing much confusion. For the record, virtualization is different from cloud computing, but these two technologies usually overlap.

Virtualization
Imagine a company with five servers, each assigned a single task such as storage, email, etc.

A virtual machine (VM) is essentially one piece of software that contains operating systems, software, and files that take a portion of computing resources from your on-premises server. VMs behave like normal files, so you could deploy a fleet of them on any workstation with ease.