What does virtualization mean to you?

http://www.bradslavin.com/2007/11/26/server-virtualization-migrate-a-server-the-smart-way/

I am not going to get into the nuts and bolts of operating system virtualization but I am going to give you enough information to follow along. Software virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same computer. The basic premise is that for most of the day your server is basically idle and the CPU and memory are not tasked with processes all day long, the server has excess capacity and virtualization allows you to maximize your investment by installing another full version of an operating system on your hardware at the same time.

The reuse of surplus computer time can help to minimize the majority of hardware acquisition and maintenance costs and reduces your total cost of ownership and it can result in significant savings for any company.

Check out this post about virtualization, it raises some interesting points about virtualization and is worth reading if you’re wondering about the process/concepts. It’s always cool to see what people think. To me virtualization is about three main things:

1. Business enabler - I can dynamically provision/add or remove capacity to meet the business need.
2. Be more efficient - use the infrastructure I have more efficiently, be more energy efficient and bare metal efficient - fewer servers doing more for my business.
3. Abstracting the application from the infrastructure - abstracting my business teams from the drivers, the firmware and all the other bits that come with server support - they become platform and server independent leading to point 1. The server fails, I move my virtual instance to server2. Next.