The Benefits of Virtualisation

The following blog series will explain and tackle the concept of 'Virtualisation'. A somewhat common term in the IT world -  it is now being increasingly used within the world of manufacturing and infrastructure. 

Last week we explored the term 'Virtualisation', it's meaning and the types of areas it is being used within the industrial arena. Today we will cover some of the key benefits: 

1. Less Downtime - The ability to quickly and easily move a virtual machine from one server to another is perhaps one of the greatest single benefits of virtualisation. Server virtualisation essentially creates a free testing zone for changes to server configurations since no additional hardware is required. In applications such as MES, for example, unplanned downtime results in lost production time. In regulated industries like pharmaceuticals, loss of data and/or control can comprise the integrity of a batch record and require in-process product to be destroyed. 

2. Reduce Your Maintenance Costs - With fewer hardware components to manage means fewer hard drive replacements etc. According to VMware and IDC, IT staff can see a 30-33% reduction in workload by converting to a virtual environment. 

3. Save Energy - Fewer hardware devices also means reduced energy usage - and supports corporate responsibility steps towards 'green IT'. 

4. Improve disaster recovery - Virtualisation can be used quite successfully to improve the resilience of an IT environment because they provide the means to recover quickly from component or system malfunctions using failover, and to back up essential applications and data. 

Next Week: How to start a Virtualisation project