Advantages of Virtualization in an IT industry

Benefits of Virtualization:
* Realize production server consolidation and containment by running software applications on fewer servers.
* Provide advanced business continuity protection at lower cost and deliver high availability for critical applications.
* Streamline software test and development by consolidating disparate development, testing, and staging environments with multiple operating systems on the same hardware.
* Re-host legacy applications on new hardware for improved reliability.


By operating a number of virtual machines on a single server, IT managers or administrators can consolidate various environments on a smaller number of machines than would otherwise be possible. For instance many enterprises maintain dedicated legacy or otherwise non-standard environments for applications that are not compatible with the operating system in use by the majority of the enterprise. That requirement often requires dedicated hardware, adding equipment and maintenance expense to often-strained operating budgets. Virtualization Technology removes the requirement for such single-use hardware, making more-efficient use of resources. Likewise, virtualization can allow a dedicated failover partition to provide systems redundancy without requiring additional hardware. Moreover, virtualization provides robust security support by allowing administrators to configure different security settings as needed on each container.


In the desktop space Processor level Virtualization Technology allows the configuration of separate builds for different uses on the same machine. For instance, IT departments could set up end-user systems with an isolated partition that performs upgrades and maintenance in the background. They might even set up separate work and personal environments on user machines, with different user permissions assigned to each environment with which to install software and otherwise control the system. Such configuration could, for example, isolate virus and spyware attacks from corporate resources while also increasing flexibility. It is similarly possible to run an Internet-connected partition under limited rights to protect against external attacks, while also running a separate virtual machine as Administrator, providing the ability to perform restricted tasks on the system.