A Brief Look at the Pros and Cons of Virtualized Computing

Managing your technology infrastructure can be challenging, but virtualized computing presents an opportunity for you to make considerable changes and progress to a more efficient way of doing so. With the right technology and the right solutions, you can break through barriers previously in place and do some remarkable things with virtualized technology.

What is Virtualized Computing?

Virtualized computing can involve creating virtual machines or virtual environments for your business to host various parts of your technology infrastructure. Whether it’s hosting multiple operating systems or running applications in a virtual environment, virtualized computing offers plenty of interesting and distinct advantages to businesses. Let’s go over some of the pros and cons of using virtualized computing.

The Pros

Cost Savings

Virtualized computing makes better use of your hardware resources, and with the right setup, you can reduce the amount of physical hardware on your infrastructure, thereby also reducing the capital needed to purchase, maintain, and operate it.

Improved Flexibility and Scalability

Virtualized environments aren’t as limited in terms of hardware, allowing for the quicker deployment of virtual machines as needed. You can scale up or down as needed, allocating resources where they need to go based on your business’ specific needs at the given time.

Testing and Development Environments

Implementing new solutions can be tricky, but virtualized environments give you isolated and safe spaces to test things out to ensure compatibility and integration with other parts of your infrastructure.

The Cons

Single Point of Failure

If you are hosting all of your virtual machines on a physical server, then if that server were to fail, it could spell disaster for your infrastructure. You can take measures to mitigate this risk, however, through appropriate monitoring and data backup systems.

Operational Challenges

Virtual computing means that you are essentially abstracting your physical hardware, meaning that there might be some performance issues that need to be addressed. Additionally, you might have more environments competing for the same resources on your virtual machine, so managing that will be a challenge.

Complexity

As the number of hosts and environments increases, so too does the complexity of your virtualized computing infrastructure, making it a challenge to manage. You’ll want to ensure you have professionals on your side to handle this.

Start Virtualizing Your Computing Today

Are you a little intimidated by this list? If implementing virtualized computing systems is something you’re worried about, then Osgood Unlimited can make the process easy. We understand that the pros and cons of virtualized computing will vary depending on implementation and your business’ situation, and we want to help you get the most out of your systems. To learn more, call us today at (978) 912-7006.