There are a number of benefits your company can enjoy with virtual servers. Cost savings are the most often cited reasons for switching to virtual servers, but there are also benefits that go beyond money. To name a few, with virtual servers you can boost productivity and enjoy a greater level of security. Let’s take a closer look:

COST SAVINGS

There are two factors often cited when explaining the cost savings offered by virtual servers: capital expenditure and utilities. When your company needs greater server capacity in a traditional infrastructure, you have to spend thousands of dollars in new servers and hardware. These new pieces of hardware all need a physical home, access to power and proper ventilation and cooling.

As your company needs grow, you can easily create new virtual machines on the hardware you already own. So, you’ll spend less on hardware, but it doesn’t end there. You’ll also experience reduced energy costs. Each virtual server delivers about an 80% reduction in total energy costs on average.

PRODUCTIVITY

The burden on your company’s IT department is significantly less with virtual servers as well. Virtual servers mean fewer physical machines, which results in less time maintaining and monitoring server related hardware. If you choose onCloud myServer, those responsibilities can be eliminated because they would fall entirely on us. This frees up your IT staff to rapidly respond to in-house emergencies and provide better support for everyday issues with the network.

Additionally, it is much easier to stay ahead of the software curve with virtual servers, because the support, upgrades and patches are easier to manage and implement. By cloning your production servers into a test/dev. environment, onCloud can easily test the installation and deployment of patches and upgrades without affecting application availability. And by keeping backups of your virtual servers, prior to any changes, it’s easy to roll back failed updates or changes, which reduces downtime.

PROTECTION

Backup has traditionally been a headache for an IT department. Trying to backup the important data in a timely fashion has been an ongoing struggle. Most IT departments choose to just backup the data and not the operating system itself. This means that backups happen faster, but restores require you to obtain hardware (if needed), rebuild the operating system and applications, and then restore the data. This can take hours, and even days, to complete, working around the clock. 

Virtualization has eased that burden. Because of the abstraction layer between the physical hardware and the virtual server, backup software has evolved to backup the entire virtual server as a whole. This not only provides greater protection but also faster restores when it really matters. We can go back to an exact working image from the time the backup was taken and not have to worry about minor details that are so often overlooked when trying to rebuild a server.

UPTIME 

A primary goal for all IT departments is reducing downtime. Traditionally, this meant having spare parts on hand to prevent or reduce the downtime with any hardware failures that arose. Virtualization has significantly reduced the downtime in today’s datacenter because it doesn’t rely on specific hardware make/model. Because the virtual servers are “portable” in a sense, you no longer have to wait for new parts to arrive; instead the virtual servers can easily move to other server hardware in the cluster, providing greater redundancy and close to 100% uptime while the failed server is being repaired.

SECURITY

Last but not least, your company can enjoy greater security on virtual machines. From a monitoring standpoint, virtual servers create a smaller infrastructure that is easier for IT staff to monitor and manage. 

 If a breach is detected, it can be dealt with more swiftly, too. Virtualization creates an environment of isolated machines, making it easier to contain a breach should it occur. This helps minimize the spread of malicious software throughout the entire network. 

 From top to bottom, a virtual server environment can offer your company significant cost savings. You can save money on hardware, reduce the size of your IT department and experience less employee downtime by making the switch to virtual servers with the help of onCloud at the helm!