The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management is designed to help IT staff better manage the complexity of virtualization. This Guide begins with a discussion of the business value of virtualization and how organizations can benefit from this technology.
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Virtual Platform
Management
Anil DesaiIntroduction
Introduction to Realtimepublishers
by Don Jones, Series Editor For several years, now, Realtime has produced dozens and dozens of high-quality books that just happen to be delivered in electronic format-at no cost to you, the reader. We've made this unique publishing model work through the generous support and cooperation of our sponsors, who agree to bear each book's production expenses for the benefit of our readers. Although we've always offered our publications to you for free, don't think for a moment that quality is anything less than our top priority. My job is to make sure that our books are as good as-and in most cases better than-any printed book that would cost you $40 or more. Our electronic publishing model offers several advantages over printed books: You receive chapters literally as fast as our authors produce them (hence the "realtime" aspect of our model), and we can update chapters to reflect the latest changes in technology. I want to point out that our books are by no means paid advertisements or white papers. We're an independent publishing company, and an important aspect of my job is to make sure that our authors are free to voice their expertise and opinions without reservation or restriction. We maintain complete editorial control of our publications, and I'm proud that we've produced so many quality books over the past years. I want to extend an invitation to visit us at http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com, especially if you've received this publication from a friend or colleague. We have a wide variety of additional books on a range of topics, and you're sure to find something that's of interest to you-and it won't cost you a thing. We hope you'll continue to come to Realtime for your educational needs far into the future. Until then, enjoy. Don Jones
iTable of Contents
Introduction to Realtimepublishers.................................................................................................. i Chapter 1: The Business Value of Virtualization ............................................................................1 A Brief History of IT Approaches ...................................................................................................1 An Overview of Virtualization ........................................................................................................3 Virtualization Terminology .................................................................................................4 A Virtualization Example ....................................................................................................5 Business and IT Challenges.............................................................................................................6 Reducing Data Center Costs ................................................................................................6 Physical Space .........................................................................................................7 Power .......................................................................................................................7 Cooling.....................................................................................................................8 Implementing Agile IT Environments.................................................................................8 Reducing Deployment Times ..................................................................................8 Technical Challenges.....................................................................................................................10 Managing Servers ..............................................................................................................10 Managing Complex Applications ......................................................................................11 Benefits of Virtualization...............................................................................................................11 Hardware Independence.....................................................................................................11 Increasing Hardware Utilization........................................................................................12 Adapting to Changes................................................................ [download for more]
