Virtualization has been a buzzword for me, until recently I stumbled across it and gave it a serious thought. I thought about sharing my experiences in this blog.

To start with we had some issues on our linux hosted webserver and had to do some sanity checks by duping it, on somewhat a similar kernel. The usual system resource crunch and the nagging system admins put me on a no mans land.

Left with no options, I decided to do some checks using ubuntu kernel. Remember I still have my notebook (windows XP) to try stuff on, I could have easily partitioned and installed ubuntu with windows and done my job. But probably I was more inclined to virtualization and thought of trying it out. I did some groundwork and came up with options like Sun Microsystems Virtual Box, VMware, virtual pc etc to name a few. Read more…

Virtualizing your IT infrastructure lets you reduce IT costs while increasing the efficiency, utilization, and flexibility of your existing assets.

Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Virtualization Software

1.Get more out of your existing resources: Pool common infrastructure resources and break the legacy “one application to one server” model with server consolidation.

2.Reduce datacenter costs by reducing your physical infrastructure and improving your server to admin ratio: Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reduced real estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. Better management tools let you improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements are reduced as well.

3.Increase availability of hardware and applications for improved business continuity: Securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately from unplanned issues.

4.Gain operational flexibility: Respond to market changes with dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning and improved desktop and application deployment.

5.Improve desktop manageability and security: Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.

Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing the resources of that single computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer.

Here is an example how to Virtualize windows XP