Virtualization is a way to increase your computing density by running multiple systems on the same hardware. For example, you can take a host system with a 4 core CPU and 4Gb of RAM and run 2 guest systems- one assigned to CPU 1 with 1Gb of ram and the second assigned to CPUs 2 & 3 with 2Gb of ram. The host system would run on CPU 0 with the remaining 1Gb of ram. The “disk” for these virtual machines or VMs can be a file on the host system, dedicated volume or a network location. Network cards and some other devices can be also be accessed by a VM.

Not only is there a cost savings from not having to purchase hardware but you can lower your energy footprint significantly since fewer devices to power also means fewer devices to cool. Another important feature of virtualization technology is that VMs are generally portable to comparable hosts. Even on systems like Microsoft Windows where hardware changes are tracked by licenses, it is possible to relocate your guest systems with ease.

At DAO, we use virtualization to build software appliances. You can think of a software appliance as a VM built for general deployment of a specific application or suite of applications. Instead of a trying to write software to run on all systems, developers can build their application on their platform of choice and deploy that software with the operating system, application framework and whatever else is necessary. All that is needed to run the VM is a host system with the necessary resources.

Our typical virtualization services are:

Please contact us to discuss your virtualization needs with one of our consultants.