ITS Virtual Machine Hosting
administration, consulting and ongoing support.
Q&A
Use Cases
Some general uses for our services, examples.
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General Questions
Issues around virtualization technology.
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Service
Questions about our service specifically.
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General Questions
Is Virtualization really "Green"?
Like most environmental issues, it depends on who you ask. In our case, it has certainly resulted in fewer physical servers and less wasted processor cycles. We're hoping that this service will result in fewer boxes under desks and in closets, which will be both more energy efficient and more secure.
Hasn't Virtualization technology been around for a long time?
Practically since the beginning of modern computing. It's only been in the last couple of years that the hardware and software have converged to make virtualization both feasible and attractive on commodity hardware. Intel is investing in support for VM in their chip designs and several companies are spending large sums to develop commercial and free virtualization products. When you combine this new development with the continuing shortage of space and the cost of cooling, you can perhaps see why there is renewed interest.
Are there any benefits other than fewer physical boxes?
One major benefit is "decoupling" servers from physical systems. In our stack, when a physical server in the pool goes offline, the VM manager brings that server up on another physical box in the pool. In our testing, this happens in milliseconds. You can do similar things with other technologies, but this actually brings the same server up on a different box. It has advantages.
We've also seen a performance increase in some applications versus dedicated physical hardware.
Contact Us if you have questions.