Virtualization Basics: What Is It, And How Can It Help Businesses?
Virtualization is far from a new idea. Even at the dawn of modern computing during the 1960s, mainframe computer resources were partitioned and shared amongst the various terminals, allowing many to access a shared pool of hardware resources. Reducing hardware management down to the amount of CPU and memory available versus what is available is a paradigm shift. And this is what virtualization boils down to; sharing and optimizing computing resources amongst many applications and users. Ultimately, the goal of virtualization is to optimize the IT infrastructure of any business; to reduce the number of physical machines while maintaining access and productivity.
One benefit is simpler, more efficient administration, reducing the amount of time needed to be spent maintaining old hardware and adding new. Downtime can be reduced from hours or even days to just minutes by using the concept of high availability. If a mission critical virtual machine or physical host fails, secondary backups can be brought online almost immediately as a new VM could be spun up on the same host, or a mirror image maintained on a second host could be made active. Furthermore, going virtual allows a company to go green as well. Reducing the amount of hardware reduced electricity consumption both directly from a reduction in the amount of servers being maintained, but also by lowering cooling costs.
Through virtualization, a company gets access to a lot of benefits all while reducing IT costs. From reduced downtime to consolidated hardware management and a reduction in the physical costs of maintenance, there is very little reason not to go virtual.
With these benefits in mind, we at Intradyn crafted the Orca Virtual Email Archiving Appliance as a standalone, ready to go open virtual file (OVF) template which can be imported into a variety of the most popular virtualization platforms, including VMware® VSphere®. With the Orca virtual appliance, email archiving is made easy, and without needing to purchase yet another server. Get all the benefits without the added cost. For more information on how Intradyn’s email archiving solutions can help your business manage its email contact sales@intradyn.com.
