In 2010 the world was mesmerized by Christopher Nolan’s Inception. This movie was so well received by the general public that shortly after its release “*insert noun here*- ception” became a prevalent phrase when referring to mind-blowing concepts that bend reality right before our very eyes. One of the more recent mind blowing “ceptions” is this notion of Virtual Computers.

Using software developed by a company called VMware, we are about to turn one physical server to numerous virtual computers that all run off this one physical computer’s hardware simultaneously. Though the technology to run multiple computers inside of one machine has actually been around for a while it is finally starting to gain some popularity in the realm of technology. But why?

  1. Virtual machines are cost efficient.

Put yourself in your boss’s shoes. If he needed 10 servers to run his company, do you think he would would rather use VMware’s technology to turn one beefy server into 10 smaller servers or would you rather buy 10 physical servers that are going to take up more floor space and jack up his energy bill?

Yeah, probably not… that’s what I thought.

vmware support virtual machine graphic
  1. Virtual computers give your IT guys less headaches.

By providing the best tools to the IT staff, you allow them to get the job done quickly with as few problems as trouble. The amount of time saved using virtual machines is hard to understate. This means they can dedicate their time to more pressing tasks while not worrying about small logistical problems that arise when they do not have virtual machines setup.

  1. Virtual computers can be moved in a blink of an eye.

My company, Guardian Computer, is based out of New Orleans, and during hurricane season a lot of our local clients always get nervous about downtime. In a VMware generated environment, our clients here in New Orleans have the ability to move these virtual computers all around the country using a pprocess known as VMotion. These VMotions are so fast that employees may not even realize they are working on a computer located thousands of miles away from their normal workstation.

A VMotion is not the only way we can move these virtual machines around. VMware has developed another notion known as High Availability that keeps a company’s virtual machines up and running even if one of their physical servers was to fail! For example, let say I were to trip over the power cord of a server in my office, and this particular server is hosting 10 virtual computers. Well, obviously without power these 10 virtual machines cannot operate, but luckily if I’m using High Availability, then VMwares software is smart enough to recognize that this host server has failed and it has the capability of turning on those virtual machines elsewhere with little

Well, obviously without power these 10 virtual machines cannot operate, but luckily if I’m using High Availability, then VMwares software is smart enough to recognize that this host server has failed and it has the capability of turning on those virtual machines elsewhere with little

Wrapping Up the Benefits of VMware

It is very easy to get lost in the realm of “virtual-ception”, but once you  wrap your mind around the idea I think you will be able to see just how AWESOME virtual computers can be. If you would like to learn more about virtual computers or VMware one of our technicians would be happy to answer any questions you may have about virtualizing your company’s servers!