Thursday, March 8, 2007

More on Virtual Machines

An interesting article in the March 6, 2007 Wall Street Journal titled " 'Virtualization' is Pumping up Servers" states that virtualization is largely to blame for the worst slowdown in x86 server sales since the dot com bust. In one example, a user went from requiring 300 servers across 45 departments to just 35 physical servers. The electricity savings alone are $30-$40K per year.

One user is quotes as saying that over the next decade "Anything that can be in a virtual machine will be. If any large organization is not looking at this, they are really missing the boat."

Though you wouldn't install C-Cure on a multi-user server because of security and reliability concerns, installing it on a virtual machine residing on a server hosting several VMs makes a lot of sense. You save on hardware, setup, IT management, electricity, make fail-over easier, etc.

Security systems are usually a few years behind the technology curve (think magstripe). Virtualization is mature technology. It's virtually a no-brainer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well written article.