The Power Of Virtualization — Servers And Storage By John Joseph, EqualLogic

Today's technology improvements offer power, cooling, and footprint cost reductions

The evolution of virtualization has resulted in new opportunities to realize significant savings in power, cooling, and footprint costs. The playing field has changed and it is now possible for the mainstream IT organization to easily and affordably deploy a completely virtualized server and storage infrastructure.

Some IT managers feel like every time they ask a question someone mentions virtualization in the answer. That could be because the technology has matured to the point of delivering on its original promise of improving efficiency and management. What does virtualization actually mean? Basically, virtualization is an abstraction layer that separates the complexity of computer systems from the user to improve visibility and usability at the human-to-machine interface.

Technologies that use virtualization layers are delivering the largest savings in energy consumption and dissipation that the IT industry has ever seen. A whole new generation of products today enables vastly improved strategies for IT forecasting, purchasing, and deployment. In the storage arena, this is personified by 3rd generation storage systems that continue the developments of networked storage behind large computers, servers, and now virtual servers. These two technology components – virtualized servers and virtualized storage systems – are vitally linked in architectural evolution.