Kent Sutherland, Contributor

A dramatic shift is taking place in the computing world that has been enabling the most advanced IT departments to manage services in a new way, giving companies more effective methods of managing their budgets.

Virtualisation allows single servers to optimise their resources by dividing the physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments, with each application running independently in its own environment.

It is a leaner, more economic use of current server technology that provides businesses with optimal computing efficiency for less money.

This phenomenon has resulted in organisations of varying sizes in the public and private sector opting to virtualise their data centres and this facility is readily available to Jamaican businesses.

This means that file, web, accounting packages, and email can be accommodated on a single server unit, thereby reducing costs for companies that depend on efficient computing to operate competitively.

As a result of the requirement for fewer server units, businesses can now take advantage of leveraging technology at an affordable price.

Data-processing power in modern servers has become so advanced that the typical utilisation level of one new unit is very low, even if it is shared among 500 users. Companies often use as low as 10 per cent of the processing capacity of each physical server.

LESS IS MORE

By grouping as many as 10 logical servers into one, thereby ensuring that the single server unit operates at efficiencies of up to 80 per cent, energy consumption is reduced and overall infrastructure management simplified.

Each physical server consumes its own share of energy and uses another amount of energy for cooling when it produces heat.

So, while it is functioning, it is important to ensure that the server operates at its highest efficiency.

Empirical accounts are that clients save a significant amount of money because of virtualisation. They have done this by monitoring the reduced energy consumption in these entities where virtualisation has been implemented.

The technique has been deployed in technological solutions for corporations like First Global Bank, Jamaica National Building Society, and Scotia DBG Investments (formerly Dehring, Bunting and Golding), the Scotiabank Group and Jamaica Public Service Company Limited.

Virtualised servers can be easily made available and this dramatically increases the uptime of critical applications.

This means at least two physical servers, connected to an external shared storage device, can be involved in the hosting of virtual servers.

The work of hosting the virtual servers is spread across the physical servers.

SERVER FAILURE

Any failure of a physical server would result only in a brief interruption, usually less than 10 minutes, of the virtual servers being hosted by that physical server. This little bit of magic occurs because the virtual servers are actually residing as files on the external shared storage device.

This is in stark contrast to the days of downtime that usually occurred when individual servers were assigned to their own physical machines.

They usually failed as they resided on the internal drives of physical machines.

Virtualisation now offers a far more cost-effective alternative for the provision of redundancy in mission-critical operations. Simply, underutilised servers are laid to rest as you use fewer servers.

The virtual servers may be quickly returned to production when another physical server takes on the additional work.

Virtualisation has tremendous benefits for the business operator, and as the practice becomes more prevalent, it could reshape the technological landscape of corporate Jamaica.

Energy consumption, primarily availed by crude oil linked into the national energy grid, is a critical issue for IT-driven organisations today, whether the goal is to reduce cost, preserve the environment, or keep local data centres running.

In that regard, virtualisation presents an opportunity that should be given serious consideration by any business seeking to maximise efficiency while containing costs.

Kent Sutherland is a solutions architect at Management Control Systems Limited.