One of the downsides of growth in any business is the need for increased investment. Maybe new premises, more staff, and often, more computing power is required to support expansion. Computer hardware is a major investment as it’s not just the equipment itself but often extra maintenance and space required to support them.
Growth in companies can be rapid – a design consultancy with more basic needs can be tomorrow’s full service online resource with commensurate increased IT requirements.
What’s the alternative?
In a nutshell, software – or more specifically virtualization of existing resources such as servers and storage.
Virtualization is a technology that has grown in popularity for IT departments of all sizes. It’s especially appealing to the smaller organization in that it facilitates swift growth with the minimum of upheaval at a significantly lower cost than investing in new hardware.
In effect, virtualization enables existing hardware to be expanded in its capacity by pooling it into on overall resource that can be tapped into and deployed depending on circumstances.
Here are major virtualization benefits offers to any organization:
Flexibility and scaling – resources are controlled by the software to meet ever-changing demands sometimes automatically or via a short session at a console. If extra capacity is required, then resources can be swiftly configured accordingly.
Cost – big benefit for many, especially young and fast-growing concerns. The costs of implementing a software solution compared to the investment in hardware infrastructure are significantly reduced. Some virtual storage solution vendors claim savings of up to 40% can be made.
Serving remote locations – some software vendors provide solutions that enable remote locations to be served from one central location. This is invaluable if extra locations such as new branches, shops or regional offices are being added – there’s no need to buy extra hardware or employ skilled people every time data needs increase when new locations open.
Use of existing infrastructure – it’s possible, again depending on your software vendors, that your existing hardware set up can be integrated into your virtualized IT facility so making the transition to a virtualized environment both relatively straightforward and cost-effective.
What software is required?
Virtualization usually requires two separate packages:
- A hypervisor – products such as VMware’s vSphere or Microsoft’s Hyper V
- A virtual SAN – to manage storage and alleviate the need for extra hardware
It is obviously important the above software systems are compatible with each other. It’s also a major advantage if they work with existing hardware and are ‘hardware agnostic’ – meaning it isn’t necessary to be tied into products from a certain vendor or be obliged to buy equipment that isn’t really required.
Virtual SAN specialists StorMagic provide a virtual SAN that meets the above requirements: along with compatibility with the above hypervisors, it’s also hardware agnostic, working with any commodity x86 servers.
Making the change
As a software solution, virtualization should be pretty quick and seamless when implementing in current setups. Good vendor support is key – look for different levels based on needs including a 24 hour option, and a free trial is worth looking for, too.
