What is Server Virtualization?

In server virtualization, specialized software (the hypervisor) can divide one physical server, known as the host, into multiple, yet separate, “virtual” environments, known as the guests or virtual machines. This complete isolation of “guests” allows each virtual machine (VM) to run completely different operating systems and applications.  This can be beneficial for server and software security, as well as for the running of the entire system as a whole.  It maximizes the abilities of the server. 

Since the operating systems are no longer attached physically to the underlying host, the guest, essentially a small set of files, can easily be moved from one physical server host to another while still running. This technology provides a much more efficient and economical way to provide high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity (BC) for organizations of all sizes.

Server Virtualization Benefits:

With a properly designed infrastructure, multiple hosts use shared storage.  In the event that one physical host fails, the other(s) can automatically pick up the load without service interruption, allowing for HA, DR, and BC to be easily achieved. By consolidating what used to be rack after rack of servers each running just one application to now having multiple virtual servers running simultaneously and utilizing hardware capabilities of the same physical server, power, cooling, and administrative costs can be dramatically reduced.  Server virtualization has the ability to quickly spin up servers using built in “cloning” capabilities, so the virtualized server environment can be scaled for demand.  Developers are able to swap out virtual machines to easily test various operating systems and versions.