The benefits of virtualization for small and medium-sized enterprises

Enterprises can run virtual jobs on a few systems in a catastrophic recovery site through virtualization and can recover on different hardware, which can significantly reduce the cost of a disaster recovery site.

The benefits of virtualization for small and medium-sized Enterprises

Before starting the selection, for SMEs, the benefits of virtualization are mainly, through the communication with some SME users, mainly includes three aspects:

1, improve efficiency, reduce costs.

Reducing costs is a tempting factor for SMEs. Virtualization reduces the cost of energy by increasing server utilization and reducing hardware input.

2 simplifies administration and maintenance.

Virtualization reduces the time to maintain repairs by reallocating the workload before the system is regularly maintained or upgraded. The response time is increased by moving between the virtual server and the desktop and the physical platform, which does not affect the user's use,

3, increased effectiveness, and reduced disaster-recovery costs.

Virtualization enables organizations to run virtual jobs on a few systems in a disaster-recovery site and recover from different hardware, which can significantly reduce the cost of a disaster-recovery site.

Virtualization challenges for small and medium Enterprises

Virtualization does face challenges for small and midsize enterprises, including the following:

1, Virtualization assessment, and proof-of-concept.

In general, the deployment of virtualization should start with the evaluation phase, the proof-of-concept phase, and gradually move towards a large-scale, mission-critical deployment phase. But it seems that many SMEs are not paying enough attention or even ignoring this. Virtualization assessments are designed and planned for virtualization implementation, in order to compute the real benefits of Tco/roi (total cost of ownership, TCO/return on Investment, ROI) that virtualization can bring to users; is to establish a virtualized demo environment and to deploy the user's application system experimentally.

2, a problem with shared storage.

However, small and medium-sized enterprises tend to have a disadvantage in comparison with large enterprises: accessibility to shared storage. Shared storage is the key to small and midsize enterprises to fully realize the potential of server virtualization. VMware has said that they spend $1 on server virtualization products for 5 of dollars on the underlying storage using traditional shared storage. Thankfully, there are already some "storage virtualization" software that can basically turn any Windows server into shared storage, and the user only pays the softwareThe cost can be used. The user can then use the existing storage hardware from different sources to complete the storage extension, further reducing the subsequent costs.

3, a single point of failure caused by a joint impact.

In a physical server, storage disruption and sabotage, independent of one server or one application, are deadly in the virtual world. In a centralized storage area network (SAN), any bottlenecks or single point of failure will affect interconnected servers and potentially hundreds of virtual services and desktops.

4, planned costs that cannot be expected.

When an enterprise launches a server or Desktop virtualization initiative, they are often surprised to find that there is a need for an important up-front investment project management and the cost of the shared storage infrastructure that is needed.

Typically, these additional costs arise from the higher availability and performance requirements for centralized implementation, especially when they need to replace existing storage area networks (Sans) that are directly attached to disks, high-end storage devices, and individual special features.

(editor: Heritage)