What kind of virtualization does SMEs need?

With the continuous deepening of virtualization technology in the data center, SMEs seem to be in a state of isolation and helplessness. Because of the high cost of licensing enterprise-class server virtualization products in IT environments, is it really necessary to deploy virtualization for small and medium-sized server storage? Such doubts have always been an unavoidable problem for SMEs.

For SME users, the benefits of virtualization are obvious. The first is to improve the efficiency of equipment use and reduce the cost of hardware investment. By simplifying the complexity of equipment management, the complexity is greatly reduced. Storage management and operational costs. In addition, it is worth mentioning that enterprise IT departments can configure one or more devices as reusable resource pools to achieve centralized resource management and sharing, improve resource utilization efficiency, and supply automation.

Since virtualization technology has so many benefits, why SMBs have not been well applied in virtualization, they are suffering from technical barriers or in improving corporate IT resilience. Scruples? As long as SMEs really understand the charm of virtualization technology, such concerns will be solved.

What is the charm of virtualization technology?

As far as the core platform server is concerned, a virtualized server product is like a multi-functional platform, where you can install any operating system required for the business, configure the network, and install the required full set. application. For example, if a user purchases 5 Windows 2003 licenses with 5 new servers and plans to invest in the infrastructure, this will probably cost you $10,000 to $15,000 in license fees. With virtualization technology, you only need to purchase one Windows Server 2003 R2 license, get up to four virtualization instances, and install four virtualized operating systems for free.

In fact, SMEs will think how to fully exploit the potential of these systems? This is a so-called integration concept, which brings together all the traditional application software and puts it on a server with several virtual instances. By using existing server resources through virtualization, it can not only cut costs but also effectively Integrate the servers in your application scenario.

But users familiar with the IT architecture will understand that in a traditional open system environment, the host system has its own storage resources, and each system administrator needs to control the allocation and use of storage resources for each system. And management. In addition, each server has a separately configured and managed file system. This low usage rate has caused companies to spend a lot of extra cost to meet the needs of storage expansion.

Therefore, the charm of virtualization technology is also here. With the continuous development of storage technology, storage virtualization technology is truly open. In virtual storage environment, storage will become transparent to users. Users do not have to care about the functional differences of storage devices, capacity, device types and manufacturers. All devices will be managed in a unified manner. Storage virtualization is no longer unfamiliar to SMEs. It can effectively serve enterprises and allow enterprises to accept them. .

When it comes to this, the benefits of virtualization are obvious. When servers, storage, and network devices are fused into multiple resource pools, organizations can achieve higher IT investment returns by increasing asset utilization. SMBs can also increase deployment flexibility, respond quickly to peak demand, and reallocate resources as demand falls. Especially in the enterprise's existing IT environment, there may be many places where companies can concentrate resources to realize the advantages of virtualization.

Nowadays, SMEs have gradually become the main force in the market and become the “sales leader” of informationization. So why can't SMEs in the market benefit from the trend of virtualization? There is uncertainty about virtualization technology, which increases the degree of planned and unplanned management that companies bring to the complex structure of the environment.

At the same time, SMEs must pay attention to these before they can benefit from virtualization and beware of potential risks. By understanding them and implementing the right solutions, companies can protect their critical applications while virtualizing their environment, avoiding costly losses.

What kind of virtualization is needed?

For SMEs, you can’t follow the trend of rashly transitioning to virtualization technology, mainly to avoid unnecessary costs, and then determine the implementation of new technologies. When a company brings revenue, it comprehensively evaluates the risks it contains and whether it can truly withstand the problems caused by the risks. In addition, take advantage of virtualization technology to increase revenue without sacrificing reliable protection for critical workloads.

In addition, when considering the choice of virtualization technology, whether you must choose a well-known technology vendor, for small and medium-sized enterprises with relatively small capital and business, some open source technology-based system usability software, perhaps more Suitable for small and medium enterprises.

Furthermore, implementing a new system requires a reasonable calculation of resources, budget and time. Systems of varying degrees take different amounts of time, so it is important to compare the time, resources, and costs involved with the actual benefits to the business.

At the same time, learn more about the implementation of new technologies, assess their current infrastructure and decide whether a new solution can actually meet their needs and how it will be implemented for the future. What effect will it have? Reasonable application to the development of their own business, more effectively improve the actual cost of the enterprise.

As a result, virtualization has brought benefits to the IT industry, enabling enterprise users to configure servers faster. At the same time, the promotion and application of virtualization technology greatly saves the space occupied by equipment while reducing costs. For small and medium-sized enterprises, with the continuous expansion of business and the demand of the market, virtualization technology will gradually penetrate into the business of enterprises, so that small and medium-sized enterprises can feel the benefits brought by virtualization technology and how to rationally deploy virtualization products. It is also a difficult problem to test SMEs.

In order to reflect the impact of virtualization on SMEs, enterprise users can configure servers faster and analyze the value of virtualization from the deployment of SMB virtualization.

For the SMB network environment, the first step is to determine which servers should be virtualized. The usual practice is to buy a new server that specifically acts as a virtualization host with at least one quad-core CPU and the largest possible memory capacity. If it is an application file server, the disk must have a corresponding capacity.

The second is to install virtualization software. There are many options for virtualization software. If you choose VMware ESXi, you can manage VMware ESXi through the web interface or the VMware Infrastructure Client that comes with the package. Because VMware installations are generally very simple and intuitive. It's as easy to install on Windows or Linux.

If you choose a product that is Hyper-V, just install Windows Server 2008 and choose to install Hyper-V. The Hyper-V management console is built on several commonly used Windows management frameworks. Anyone familiar with Windows servers should be able to get started quickly, leaving a technical barrier for SMBs.

How to deploy a virtualized application

After the virtualization software layer is installed, you can migrate from a physical environment to a virtual environment by building a virtual server and migrating services.

Although VMware, Microsoft and other vendors offer physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration tools, it is often wise for SMBs to rebuild virtual servers from scratch than to migrate from physical hosts. Take the time to install new ones. The system can reduce the trouble later.

In addition, by taking advantage of the snapshot capabilities of the virtualization solution, users can take snapshots of virtual machines before applying service packs or applying updates, saving time and effort. If there is a problem with the update program, you can use the snapshot to quickly restore the server to the previous version and resume normal operation.

It can be seen that due to the emergence of many low-cost, high-performance servers and free virtualization solutions, there is no reason not to adopt virtualization technology for SMEs. In fact, many companies will find that with a free virtualization framework, SMB users need only a small number of servers to run the entire infrastructure. But here I believe that, like any IT implementation application, the virtualization architecture also needs time to adjust to meet the requirements of the enterprise, but the effect of improving utilization and reducing costs is obvious.