Server Virtualization Topics
Benefits of server virtualization
Server virtualization brings clear benefits, including server consolidation and improved resource utilization, reduced power consumption and greater IT efficiency, reduced costs and server sprawl, improve server management, provisioning and configuration as well as operational performance. Get news, research and advice on how companies use server virtualization to reduce server hardware costs, increase performance and operational efficiency and manage data center environments more effectively. Read our tutorials on getting the benefits of server virtualization. More about Benefits of server virtualization
Challenges of server virtualization
Despite the clear benefits of server virtualization, there are obvious challenges to successful server virtualization deployment, including server virtualization management hurdles, server consolidation best practices, server migration issues, virtualization support, licensing, and interoperability issues, virtualization cost-versus-performance tradeoffs and more. In this section on server virtualization's challenges, we cover virtualized data center management challenges such as curbing virtual server sprawl, reducing downtime and preventing virtual machine security breaches, how to write effective virtualization service-level agreements to ensure quality of service, how to overcome virtualization licensing hurdles and considerations, the problem of virtual server sprawl, how to contend with increasing virtualization systems management complexity, virtual machine security, per-socket, per server, metered licensing and other virtualization software licensing models, and how to ensure adequate support for virtualization. More about Challenges of server virtualization
Server virtualization hypervisors and management
VMware, Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization and Citrix Systems' XenServer present pros and cons in terms of your virtualization architecture and strategy. Whether you use a single provider or have a heterogeneous virtualized environment, these resources help parse the hype on virtualization providers' platforms, management tools, and more so you can choose the platform that makes sense for your environment – and make informed choices about migrating to a different virtualization provider. You can also learn how to install and manage hypervisors such as VMware ESX or vSphere as well as installing Citrix XenServer, Oracle VM or other virtualization technologies. And we also discuss the benefits of migrating from VMware to, say, Hyper-V and provide cost/benefit comparisons of the various virtualization vendors' technologies. This section delves deep into the capabilities of virtualization providers' virtualization technologies and management tools. We provide news analysis, research and step-by-step tutorials on the various virtualization hypervisors and platforms and evaluate their benefits and disadvantages in terms of performance, cost, security, reliability, support, licensing considerations, and more. More about Server virtualization hypervisors and management
Server virtualization infrastructure and architecture
How you build your virtualization infrastructure and architecture is one of the most major decisions you make, and your choices will dictate whether your virtualized environment helps you consolidate physical servers, space, reduce costs and improve resource utilization or whether it suffers from performance problems, virtual machine security risks, virtual sprawl, virtualization licensing and compliance problems, and other management issues. From the server hardware, operating systems and networking choices to your choice of virtual systems management tools, your virtualized environment has certain requirements to ensure virtual machine performance, system uptime, VM security and compliance and more. Whether you're building a private cloud or developing an environment for a public cloud, you need to know how to design and architect your virtualization environment for these requirements. This section provides news, advice and how-to's on building a virtualized infrastructure, so you make can informed decisions about your virtualization environment make sense for your virtualized architecture and offers best practices on how to build a server virtualization architecture that grows with your business needs and technical requirements. More about Server virtualization infrastructure and architecture
Server virtualization management tools and practices
While virtual systems management tools and best practices can improve virtual machine (VM) performance, ease virtual management burdens, and help administrators plan for system change and growth, most virtualization administrators can attest to the challenges of managing dynamic virtualized server environments. This section of news, technical advice and how-to information is designed to help with the challenges that server virtualization can bring: curbing virtual sprawl, performing physical-to-virtual (P2V) migrations, tools to monitor virtual machines, provisioning and configuring virtual machines, preventing VM downtime and planning strategies to build your virtualized data center, this section includes news, research and step-by-step tutorials on the best server virtualization management tools and practices for virtualized environments to help you improve performance, ease management burdens, work with heterogeneous virtualized environments, plan for data center growth and more. More about Server virtualization management tools and practices
Server virtualization security management and compliance policies
For virtualization administrators, virtual machine security has become an increasing concern. How do you monitor VMs for potential security risks and breaches? How do you prevent bugs from breaking through the virtual wall and attacking the host system? And which virtual machine guidelines should your IT shop adopt to ensure that your virtual machines are secure? So too, if your large virtualized virtualization environment suffers from a lack of compliance policies, it's no wonder you dread the prospect of an IT audit. The first step to easing the burden of staying compliant in a virtual world is bringing process and policies to your virtualized infrastructure. If you need help with securing virtual machines, preventing virtual machine security breaches, or guidance with an IT audit management for virtualized resources, this section offers advice, research and tutorials on the discovery and inventory of virtual machines (VMs), tracking and monitoring of VMs to ensure VM security, methods to harden virtual machines, how to create an audit trail of VM changes, preventing software licensing violations, and other guidelines to comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and more. More about Server virtualization security management and compliance policies
Server virtualization staffing and budgets
Server virtualization has enabled companies to reduce IT budgets by cutting server hardware costs, reducing data center footprint and space needs, improving IT operational efficiency and, in some cases, reducing companies' IT staffing needs by streamlining server management. But for companies striving to save money with virtualization, the challenge lies in your choices. How can you gain optimum virtual machine performance and also reduce energy consumption? Can reduction in data center energy-efficiency costs offset other new purchases such as for hardware purchases or other virtualization management tools? Get news, case studies and advice on virtualizing servers to reduce IT costs. Learn how virtualization consolidates servers, eliminates hardware costs and reduces power consumption. Learn about the best hardware, server virtualization management tools and other considerations in reducing data center power consumption. More about Server virtualization staffing and budgets
Server virtualization strategies and use cases
There are several ways to use virtualization, from setting up test and development environments to consolidating physical servers and, thus, reducing hardware costs to equipping a mobile workforce with virtualized laptops to creating a data center disaster recovery site. This section covers the various ways in which virtual technologies are being used today to reduce data center costs, minimize data center footprint, eliminate unneeded physical servers, aid with physical server backup and recovery and enable mobile workers through virtual desktop infrastructure and virtualized desktops. We cover the pros and cons of these various use cases and how to get the most from each application of virtualized technologies. More about Server virtualization strategies and use cases
Virtualization backup and disaster recovery strategies
With server virtualization for disaster recovery, you can develop a business continuity strategy that includes backup and recovery techniques with virtualized servers rather than dedicating idle physical servers to backup tasks. In addition to reducing hardware costs and data center footprint, using server virtualization as part of your disaster recovery strategy can improve system uptime and recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives as well as ensure the integrity of the data you retrieve. Using virtualization for disaster recovery can also help with testing and development of your recovery site. In this section, we offer resources on server virtualization for disaster recovery and provide tutorials on requirements and best practices for creating a disaster recovery site with virtualization, the pros and cons of backup techniques such as file-level versus block-level deduplication, snapshotting, using golden images to restore data, failover technologies, the pros and cons of Fibre Channel versus iSCSI storage area networks (SANs), the advantages and disadvantages of hosted disaster recovery services, and more. More about Virtualization backup and disaster recovery strategies