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Virtualization: A Small Business Perspective

Written by: Linda Jacobson

Article Overview: Virtualization is Gartner's Number One strategic technology for 2009. It's become almost a no-brainer for large companies and data centres. But does it make sense for small and medium businesses? The answer is yes, no, or maybe! That depends on whom you ask, and what you need. This topic is the fourth in our 2009 white paper series: "Making every IT dollar count!" The full white papers are available on our website.

Virtualization: A Small Business Perspective

Virtualization means splitting up a single physical computer into several "virtual" computers. Server virtualization is the most common, and involves splitting up a single physical server into several virtual servers. In desktop virtualization, a central server is divided up into multiple virtual desktop computers that are accessed remotely.

MAIN PROS OF VIRTUALIZATION

• Savings on hardware, energy usage, management and co-location
• Faster and cheaper backup and disaster recovery. For small businesses, this is probably the most significant benefit.
• Ability to set up test computers without disrupting live ones

MAIN CONS OF VIRTUALIZATION

• Single point of failure. No virtualized system should be put in place without proper contingency planning.
• Higher costs for individual servers, higher bandwidth costs.
• Because of economies of scale, the hardware, energy and other savings that make virtualization so compelling for large organizations may not materialize for small and medium businesses.

DOES VIRTUALIZATION MAKE SENSE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES?

Yes, no, and maybe - but it's well worth considering, if only for the huge benefits in backup and disaster recovery.

• Expert opinion is divided as to whether virtualization can pay for itself in environments with fewer than 20 servers.
• The biggest benefits are faster and cheaper backup and disaster recovery, scalability and greater technical potential and flexibility.
• Benefits are most likely to be in TCO rather than direct, immediate savings in, say, hardware and energy costs.

Virtualization will move different costs in different directions. In a typical small business with fewer than 20 servers:

• Backup and disaster recovery costs will go down, as will power and cooling costs (if they were high in the first place).
• Co-location costs will go down if you are reducing the number of hosted servers.
• Hardware and IT support costs will stay the same or go down.
• Licensing and bandwidth costs will stay the same or go up.

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  Perspective.

Article Tags: bandwidth costs, central server, co location, desktop computers, disaster recovery, economies of scale, energy costs, energy usage, li li, medium businesses, physical computer, physical server, scalability, server virtualization, single point, test computers, usage management, virtual computers, virtual desktop, virtual servers



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