Virtualization is a consolidation of the operating system deployed on a number of physical servers into one physical server.
Consolidation of the system achieves significant financial benefits. Today's x86-based systems in many cases have an average percentage of utilization of available resources (CPU, RAM and storage) at the level of 10-15%, which speaks volumes about the current underuse of resources owned by the user. In addition, the usual concept of server system is one server - one application. In practice this means: the number of different applications the company uses, is the minimum number of servers that it has. Server consolidation achieves significant progress. Quality consolidation brings increased utilization of available resources by 50-85%. Virtualization reduces the number of needed servers in the system for at least 3 to 5 times.
In practice, significant savings in server resources are achieved. Some users have achieved consolidation ratios 1:10 to 1:20 of physical compared to virtual servers! Obviously that brings about significantly lower cost when purchasing the server infrastructure.
Some less obvious benefits of virtualized systems:
- Running different operating systems (Windows, Linux ...) at the same time on the same server
- Reduced consumption of electricity,
- Smaller number of servers reduces the demand for electricity,
- Air conditioners that work in reduced capacity because of a smaller number of servers that generate heat,
- Less accompanying peripherals (monitors, etc.) and UPS devices
- Reduced complexity and the size of the network infrastructure due to the reduced number of required network ports through which the server establishes a connection with the rest of the system,
- Reduced maintenance costs due to fewer hardware components subjective to critical failures (disk drives, power supply, etc.)
- Reduced administration costs due to the smaller number of system administrators, or vice versa - increased productivity of system administrators in production environments, which cover up to 5 times more active virtual servers compared to physical.
Virtualization enables greater freedom in choosing the hardware base of the system.
Virtual machines are in its architecture completely independent of the hardware on which they run, and the changes of key hardware components have no impact on them. The user now has the possibility of optimal usage of available hardware. In practice, this means that the possible cancellation of the physical server that drives the virtual machines means that these same virtual machines easily transferred to another physical machine and it continues to work with minimal unavailability of services. This significantly reduces the time needed for recovery and startup.
References (in alphabetical order)
- CAIB Invest d.o.o.
- Combis d.o.o.
- Croatian Energy Market Operator
- Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency
- Croatian State Archives
- Euroherc osiguranje d.d. (Insurance company)
- Generali Osiguranje d.d. (Insurance company)
- Hrvatski Telekom d.d. (Telecommunications provider)
- Labud d.d.
- Novi list d.d. (Media company)
- Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Croatia
- Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Croatia – Customs Administration
- Slatinska banka d.d. (Bank)