Virtually yours !


Over the last number of months more and more information and products have appeared in the Virtualisation arena. What does this mean for IT managers and system administrators tasked with implementing and monitoring these new technologies ? What advantages and problems do the various approaches bring ? How do I get to play with this emerging technology ?

Background

What do we mean by virtualisation ?

Virtualization allows companies to run multiple operating systems and applications on one piece of hardware, ultimately maximizing your computing resources in terms of cost-effectiveness, efficiency and performance. It is achieved by virtually separating the physical hardware from the operating system, thus allowing multiple operating systems to run side by side on the same machine.

Some products to Google for –

VMware Player (free)

Virtual PC and Server from Microsoft (again free)

Parallels (Not free but runs on Mac and Windows

Virtualbox (Free)

Intel tool for seeing what capabilities CPU has Intel® Processor Identification Utility from www.intel.com and one for AMD processors – google for Central Brain Identifier