Up until now, the cost of managing and maintaining storage was deemed unavoidable and worth it to ensure high availability, shared access across hosts, low latencies, etc. These features will still probably be required for large, complex companies (and for core data center functions, etc.) for years to come, but in many other cases, they may not be required.
Read moreTwo years ago, I attended my first Interop IT Conference and Expo in Las Vegas, and it left quite an impression on me. I’d heard about the “granddaddy of all IT conferences,” as it is now in its 28th year, and it didn’t disappoint. Despite the cool parties, the cool swag, and the well-staffed booths, Interop was also wall-to-wall with the world’s IT leaders in attendance. And I was in awe. This year is no different.
Read moreIn general, the idea behind virtualization is to make many from one. As an example, from one physical server using virtualization software, multiple virtual machines can run as if each virtual machine were a separate physical box. In data centers, before virtualization, one or more applications and an operating system would run on their own unique physical server. Since each one of those physical servers needed floor or rack space, there was a problem of the growing size and number of data centers that businesses needed in IT. As more and more physical servers were added to run the ever growing number of virtual machines, this led to “data center sprawl.” Using virtualization to consolidate the number of physical servers reversed the trend of data center sprawl, and companies began to see a cost savings.
Read moreCelebrating its tenth year, VMworld was a busy event this year—as it has been every year for the past nine.
Read moreIT professionals should strive to learn the proper meanings of terms used in the IT virtualization vocabulary and ensure that they and their colleagues share the same definitions. It is mainly vendor-agnostic, but here are some vendor-specific terms, product names, and feature names used by VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft.
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