Virtualization Platforms

What Are Virtualization Platforms

Server virtualization allows you to work with virtual resources: the central processing unit (vCPU), RAM (vMEM), hard drives (vHDD), network interfaces (vNIC), PCI bus, graphics processor (vGPU), build failover clusters, take snapshots, dynamically manage virtual machine resources, work with them in graphical or console mode, as well as using VDI and 3D VDI technology. Data storage virtualization provides flexible data management for VMs and faults tolerance and performance at any level.

What is the main incentive to use virtualization?

Savings tend to be the first and most obvious driver of the first phase of server virtualization, which is implemented exclusively “inside IT” and usually affects only non-critical and specific IT applications and services.

The most interesting, however, begins with the penetration of virtualization into the field of business-critical applications, where the main driver of its use is not savings but obtaining additional benefits: faster delivery of services to the market, increased dynamism, fault and disaster tolerance, etc.

How to choose a virtualization system?

How to make a choice? The sequence of actions is approximately the following:

  • Please make a list of manufacturers of virtualization systems (at least three positions), and read their technical documentation (usually available on websites).
  • To mark the most critical functions of virtualization systems for the organization.
  • Collect all information about your infrastructure and the services you use.
  • Define relationships between services, hardware, and processes.
  • Develop a program and test methodology.
  • Deploy products of all vendors, and test each in its circuit.
  • Analyze test results, reflect them in a single document and choose a solution.
  • Train employees.
  • Implement the solution and start using it.

Usually, these steps take a long time. To speed up the process, you can use IT integrators with extensive expertise software and have already gone through some of the steps described above; for example, they can compare products from more than ten manufacturers. Thus, the vendor and virtualization system choice will be based on the customer’s needs.

First of all, you need to understand what tasks the organization solves with the help of virtualization and clarify which functionality for the infrastructure is critical and which is an additional wish. It is also important to determine which systems will work, on what equipment, and with what it is necessary to provide integration. This is the only way to choose the most accurate virtualization system.

But even if the chosen virtualization meets the customer’s requirements, there is no guarantee that everything will be perfect. Moreover, implementing a new virtualization system is a complex project. Therefore, it is extremely important to control all stages of the implementation of the solution since difficulties can arise at any of them – due to the peculiarities of the IT infrastructure, equipment incompatibility, insufficient competence of the maintenance personnel, suboptimal migration program, etc.

Share