Save space, money and time with virtualization

Cutting operating costs is just one reason I’d advise real estate offices to adopt a process called virtualization.

Virtualization is having one server host several servers in your office. One machine means significantly fewer hardware and utility costs, as well as less administration time.

It used to be that companies were forced to host massive server environments, which would each have its own hardware and setup quirks. The time to set up each server, along with the associated costs, made setting up an office a daunting task.

But things have changed. VMware, Microsoft and Symantec specialize in creating newer services that allow you to purchase a healthy amount of hard disk space. For a real estate office, I’d recommend starting with 12 gigs of RAM and go up from there.  The software incorporated with these new servers then migrates your older servers over to the new unit. To the outside world and your in-house users, nothing has changed. They have access to everything they had before and each server appears as before but now you have options.

With these new systems, you can create a new server in minutes, change assigned hard disk space and RAM for each server as your computing needs change and clear away the clutter of old machines.

A new feature available through virtualization is called a snapshot. The software allows you to create a snapshot of any server it hosts. Even a large server can create a snapshot in minutes. This snapshot can then be either saved to the same machine or offloaded elsewhere. This makes backing up your data extremely convenient. You now can restore an entire server in a minute in the event of an emergency. If you’re using an old server, it would probably take you at least a day and a half to move everything over after a crisis.

The cost savings are many. You’ll save the costs of buying a new computer every time you want a new server; you’ll save money on software since most entry-level virtualization solutions are free to download and with the deregulation of electric utilities, you’ll save the rising power costs of running multiple servers.

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Tags: computer, server, Technology

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 6:55 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.