FAQ's

F1 Solutions answers your questions!

What is Virtualisation?

Virtualisation in the IT arena relates to computer resources. We can virtualise servers (server virtualisation), desktops (desktop virtualisation) and applications (application virtualisation).

Server virtualisation means taking a physical server (computer) and partitioning it into several virtual servers. These virtual servers then function as separate fully functional servers and can work independently with certain devices, applications and data.

Then there is desktop virtualisation. Desktop virtualisation means that your computer desktop and applications are moved to the server. This allows for centralised management which reduces the time involved in desktop hardware maintenance and minimises the amount of processing, memory and other system resources required by desktops.

Just to round things out, Application virtualisation allows you to use an application from your local computer that is actually run on the server. This means you can access the application without the need to install the application on your personal computer.

What's the benefit of server virtualisation?

Well, you know the scenario. The server goes down hosting your emails and files...and suddenly nobody can get any work done. You can't even use email to let everybody know that you are working as hard as you can to get this fixed and phoning you every five minutes to see how much longer this is going to go on isn't helping.

Now imagine the scenario. You have a virtual server for email and a virtual server for file storage. The email server goes down - your staff can keep working and saving their files in Word and Excel and there is a lot less panic while you work out what needs to happen to get email back up again. Or, the application server goes down. You work hard getting it back up again while keeping your people informed via email. Everybody's happy - they feel like they have been kept in the loop and while you get things working they've been able to continue to be productive using email.

What happens if the physical server goes down?

This is truly a system administrator’s nightmare, and it isn’t good news for the users and business managers either. If you dread hearing the words ‘the server has crashed’ you’ll want to keep reading.

If your business relies on your IT system, whether it is for email, access to files and documents or running line-of-business applications, loss of access to these systems results in frustration, lost productivity and lost revenue. A highly available and fault tolerant infrastructure is essential to ensure business continuity is maintained and mitigates the consequences of server failures.

One approach to implementing a highly available infrastructure is to use multiple servers in a clustered environment. Using Microsoft Hyper V R2 we can make your server infrastructure resilient to these hardware and software failure ensuring you maximise your investment and continue what you do best, offering services and/or products to your clients. This setup also works even if your servers are in different physical location.

Let’s say you have offices at Fyshwick, Belconnen and Tuggeranong. You can maximise your server investment by implementing virtualisation (this also gives you the opportunity to balance the load on the server particularly where one office has a higher utilisation rate) and clustering the servers at all three locations.

So, what happens if the physical server goes down? Of course you may notice a reduction in capacity – you have just lost one third of your computing power. But, you are still operational. You can save your files and you can continue to send and receive emails.

You have achieved business continuity and built-in disaster recovery and you haven’t even had to purchase new servers or software if you already have Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

What other types of server virtualisation are there?

It is also possible to virtualise multiple servers and have them work as essentially one large server. Joining more than one physical server into a single virtual resource allows you to more efficiently manage the virtual servers and provides increased tolerance to faults and hardware failures. If you are suddenly thinking about how much simpler it would be to maintain one server resource rather than three you're starting to understand how much time and money virtualisation can save you.

Is my office too small to benefit from virtualisation?

Virtualisation can benefit even a small office. It has more to do with what technology you are using and the reliance your business has on IT infrastructure than with how big your IT infrastructure.