Virtualization in small businesses
Introduction to the technology of virtualization
Virtualization is concerned with the generalization of various computer resources. There are four major ways of virtualization namely hardware virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization and application virtualization.
Hardware virtualization
In hardware or platform virtualization, the computer memory is divided in separate and isolated parts known as Virtual machines (VM). Virtual machines are mechanisms which are basically a virtual (software) version of a computers physical hardware. It permits various versions of the same operating system or different operating systems to run simultaneously on a single computer. It should be kept in mind that the concept behind virtual machines is different from a dual boot or multi boot system where only a single operating can be chosen and run at a time. Virtual machines are also considered to be programming language interpreters for example Java Virtual Machine, Python etc. There are two types of virtual machine namely system virtual machines and process virtual machines.
System virtual machines These are also known as hardware virtual machines which comprise of a system platform that supports the execution of an entire OS.
Process virtual machines These are also known as application virtual machines since they only allow a single process or application to run on the different environments
Network virtualization
It involves the monitoring and administration of an entire network from a single network administrators workstation. In network virtualization, a single pool is created in which all servers and related services are brought together which could also be rearranged in real time in order meet any future changes in requirements.
Storage virtualization
In storage virtualization, various types of storage media are brought together in a single pool. This enables different applications to read or write from this pool of storage mediums. Storage virtualization is sometimes also termed as file virtualization, in file virtualization any excess storage capacity on a server can be shared. Moreover files can also be transferred (migrated) from one server to the other.
Application virtualization
In application virtualization, various applications can be accessed and executed by different environments on a physical hardware (through a virtualization layer) are without the need to necessarily installing them. Application virtualization has considerable benefits for instance it allows applications to run in environments which dont support the application in its original format (Golden. 2007).
Major players in the virtualization software industry
Virtualization software industry was an estimated 6 billion in 2008 and analysts project that it will exceed 22 billion by the end of 2013. This billion dollar industry is therefore beginning to gain strong ground in the technology sector.
Although Microsoft is among the giants when considering the complete technology sector and has been strongly rivaled by Google only but when considering the virtualization software industry independently VMware is considered to be the leader.
VMware has a mammoth 80 share of the virtualization software market in 2008. And the remaining 20 was shared by other leading market participants namely Oracle (for its Virtual Iron), Citrix Systems (for Xen) and Microsoft.
The reason behind VMwares success which is a highly successful company today with estimated 1.9 billion
revenue in 2008 is its resilient technology. VMware has continuously updated the features of its various virtualization softwares which are reflective of changing needs.
Moreover VMware also announced the acquisition of SpringSource who is a leading open source software development tools developer. Acquisition of SpringSource has the potential to overcome the prowess of Windows operating system on both cost efficiency and technical grounds.
Another key approach which makes VMware stand out is its endeavor to further cut down its operational costs through increasing the deployment of virtualized servers which would further bring down the need of human administrators. This is being done as a measure to provide more cost efficient products to their customers.
On the other hand analysts do predict that Microsofts virtualization softwares are gradually starting to catch up largely due to superior marketing and better features and it is expected that Microsoft will have a 29 market in 2012. (The New York Times. n.d)
How virtualization technology can be used for small businesses
Virtualization is usually considered to be fully utilized by large enterprises which have a large volume of data and resources which would need the assistance of virtualization. However with time and advancement in information technology the need for virtualization has even been felt by small businesses.
Moreover high performing computer systems and servers at affordable costs also encouraged small businesses to give a second thought to virtualization. However in order to take substantial advantage of virtualization the following steps have to be understood and effectively performed
Server Deployment
This is a time consuming task and will require substantial input from the IT staff. It involves a system being built from scratch which would include installation and configuration of operating systems, applications and the network. A major issue with this task is that for every new system the whole task would have to be repeated again. Therefore it would be much more feasible for small businesses to once deploy a system and redeploy it as and when needed via a virtual environment.
This would be done through a mechanism called transportable images. A transportable image a system to built and tested on a hardware platform which could then be redeployed on any hardware irrespective of the configuration.
Though one thing should be kept in mind that not every deployment tool supports transportable images hence the imaging program chosen should all sorts of data migration i.e. physical to virtual machine, virtual to virtual, virtual to physical and physical to physical.
Hardware and software support
Small businesses should also ensure that their hardware and application support 64-bit technology since many IT infrastructures today use this and it wont be long before it completely replaces the 32-bit technology. Therefore even if businesses arent using the 64-bit hardware currently they should ensure that their systems are capable of switching to this platform in future because no doing so would result in redeployment of an entitys servers in every four to five years which would definitely be quite costly for a small business in particular.
Furthermore it should also be ensured that appropriate tools are available which allow switching from one virtual OS to another.
Migration process customization
Since the volume of data is considerably less than in large organizations, there will be instances where an entity would wish to only to transfer a group of folders or files from one virtual system to another. This can be facilitated through tools that can drag and drop files in between different systems.
Handling live data
Employees in small businesses tend be less and that in the IT department tend be even lesser particularly if its a subsidiary department, therefore handling live data is quite a challenge for small businesses.
Smaller entities have only a handful of tools and methods to create a backup of live data which should be considered appropriately. One method would be to shutdown the server and take backup, although this method would prevent loss of data but it would bring all business processes to a halt and adversely affect the overall productivity of the business. Another method would be back up live data in the background on a live running system. This can be done through a disk imaging application (Wolf Halter, 2005).
How it could be useful
Virtualization has many uses for small business for instance it could be used for disaster recovery purposes. It has been seen that small businesses due to lack of focus on effective disaster recovery plans tend to lose substantial data which sometimes cannot be recovered even and hence becomes a permanent loss for an entity. Even if data is recoverable somehow it still is a laborious task and involves an opportunity cost sine the IT personnel could focus their efforts on more productive tasks.
Virtualization here could save the business the loss of data and time by capturing backup on a single image and therefore making recovery easier.
Benefits of Virtualization in small sized businesses
Virtualization has significant benefits not only for large businesses but for small and medium sized businesses as well.
Increase in efficiency of IT personnel
Most IT departments in small business are known to be occupied with routine tasks for the major part of the day which adds little or no value to the business. Ever since the adoption of virtualization by smaller entities, it has been seen that IT staff are now focusing their energies on more transformative tasks.
Backup and data protection
As discussed earlier, virtualization also helps entities in not only making an appropriate back up but also make sure that data protection is achieved which is crucial for an organization to retrieve accurate historical data when needed.
Becoming more responsive to changing business needs
Increase in company profitability and growth
Data is unprocessed knowledge for any business and it proper preservation is gaining importance with each passing day. Workstations and servers are deployed by an organization to fulfill that purpose however the amount of data an organization possesses has seen significant increase over the years for organizations all around the world. Therefore virtualization has seen an increase in popularity probably because it has helped entities save substantial capital costs which have resulted in improved profitability and growth.
Disadvantages of Virtualization in small sized businesses
A major disadvantage of virtualization in small businesses is that it involves higher bandwidth expenses and higher costs for deploying individual servers. Even if a small sized business is performing well it is difficult to justify the benefits one can get from it.
Since the needs of small businesses are quite less it has been seen that virtualization is not used to its full potential and hence the benefit obtained is marginal.
Organizations which lack the capabilities of effectively managing application performance can lose out on many benefits of virtualization.
Larger business benefit from economies of scale obtained as result of application of virtualization however the same cant be said for smaller businesses.
Moreover virtualization involves newer technology after every few years and it could be difficult for small business to afford significant capital expenditures every few years.
Conclusion
Small businesses face much of the same challenges and have to perform many of the same tasks as large businesses, the only difference is in the volume. Increasing advancement in information technology has brought the concept of virtualization to the forefront which makes a business more portable.
In the case of small businesses, virtualization has both pros and cons. And whether a small sized business needs to adopt virtualization will be determined from its information needs.
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