Server Virtualisation
VMware | What is a Virtual Infrastructure?
In essence, a virtual infrastructure is a dynamic mapping of physical resources to business needs. While a virtual machine represents the physical resources of a single computer, a virtual infrastructure represents the physical resources of the entire IT environment, aggregating x86 computers and their attached network and storage into a unified pool of IT resources
Structurally, a virtual infrastructure consists of the following components:
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Single-node hypervisors to enable full virtualisation of each x86 computer.
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A set of virtualisation-based distributed system infrastructure services such as resource management to optimize available resources among virtual machines.
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Automation solutions that provide special capabilities to optimize a particular IT process such as provisioning or disaster recovery.
By decoupling the entire software environment from its underlying hardware infrastructure, virtualisation enables the aggregation of multiple servers, storage infrastructure and networks into shared pools of resources that can be delivered dynamically, securely and reliably to applications as needed. This pioneering approach enables organizations to build a computing infrastructure with high levels of utilization, availability, automation and flexibility using building blocks of inexpensive industry-standard servers.
Virtual Infrastructure Benefits
VMware has made it possible to fully realize the enormous benefits of virtualisation in production-scale IT environments by building virtual infrastructure automation and management capabilities around a best-in-class hypervisor. In fact, 86% of VMware customers use virtualisation in production and 43% deploy most new production applications in virtual machines.
VMware virtual infrastructure solutions are ideal for production environments in part because they run on industry-standard servers and desktops and support a wide range of operating system and application environments, as well as networking and storage infrastructure. We have designed our solutions to function independently of the hardware and operating system to provide customers with a broad platform choice. As a result, our solutions provide a key integration point for hardware and infrastructure management vendors to deliver differentiated value that can be applied uniformly across all application and operating system environments.
VMware customers who have adopted our virtual infrastructure solutions have reported dramatic results, including:
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60-80% utilization rates for x86 servers (up from 5-15% in non-virtualized PCs)
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Cost savings of more than $3,000 annually for every workload virtualized
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Ability to provision new applications in minutes instead of days or weeks
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85% improvement in recovery time from unplanned downtime