The advent of new technologies such as virtualization and cloud is changing the way Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are approaching their IT infrastructure. Virtualization as a technology is not new. Most businesses have heard about it and the rate of adoption has been growing rapidly for years. According to the Symantec 2011 Small Business Virtualization Poll, 72 percent of the respondents from APJ said their organizations were considering virtualization.

What are the factors that make virtualization find increasing acceptance and adoption amongst organizations of all sizes and SMBs in particular?

The term “virtualization” usually refers to server virtualization, which is dividing a single physical server into multiple virtual servers, each running its own operating system and associated workload. For SMBs with limited IT infrastructure coupled with tight budgets, virtualization allows different virtual machines to run different operating systems and multiple applications, thereby allowing more efficient use of existing software and hardware resources. While users enjoy full access to their systems, SMB IT staff can provision, manage, upgrade, and patch them virtually, instead of physically. This also means that users can access files and applications on a central server. Businesses can also opt for a hybrid model where users can access some of the applications through a central virtualized server and the others through their local computers.

The Benefits

Greater efficiency: Virtualization allows you to reduce, reuse, and retire existing server platforms. It greatly simplifies the physical IT structure, allowing you to manage, secure, and upgrade desktop and laptop computers centrally.

Disaster Recovery:  Virtualization ensures business continuity by reducing the risk of IT outages and data loss. Backup and disaster recovery is much simpler and faster and ensure disaster recovery in case of an application failure. In an emergency, a company’s entire virtualized environment can be remotely archived and the backup virtual server accessed by end users, with little or no downtime. 

Reduced costs: Virtualization enables each server to be used at its fullest potential, resulting in fewer physical servers and decreasing maintenance costs and time.

Managing Virtualized Environments: 

Once SMBs establish a virtual environment, they can control and monitor both virtual and physical servers from a single, centralized console. Their IT teams can easily move existing virtual machines to other server platforms enabling SMBs to pool and share their storage assets, simplify resource management and increasing utilization.

While a virtualized environment offers many benefits, it can also bring unintended consequences, including storage growth, virtual server sprawl and problem identification issues.

Storage management: The proliferation of easy-to-create virtual machines can result in duplication of data and make backup less efficient.  If not planned properly, virtualization may increase the complexities of storage management related to monitoring, reporting and managing a virtual environment.

Virtual server sprawl:  Virtualization sprawl is caused when administrators can no longer manage the number of virtual machines on a network effectively.

Problem isolation: Virtualization encapsulates application components to make it easier to move application workloads between servers. However, this also reduces visibility into the state of those components, which can make the identification and remediation of disaster recovery issues challenging.

Security Considerations: Virtualization can pay off big dividends for small businesses, but security remains a concern. SMBs will still need to protect their IT infrastructure from malicious threats and data theft.

It is important that they check their server’s security settings, which dictate security for network traffic to and from the host server. The IT team must also secure servers (and other devices) with strong passwords, endpoint/antivirus software, intrusion detection systems and properly configured firewalls.

So How Do SMBs install and adopt virtualization without hassles?

The adoption and subsequent usage of virtualization in an organization’s IT infrastructure requires careful planning. The following recommendations can help small businesses achieve smooth and hassle-free adoption of virtualization:

• Talk to an IT consultant or Value Added Reseller (VAR): This helps SMBs to review current business processes, growth plans, and IT infrastructure.  The consultant should also know how to secure and back up the virtualized environments to avoid potential challenges.
   
• Inventory your current IT: This can be done to understand, how your current IT environment will be affected by a virtual solution. It is important to know how the current servers are being used, whether there is a need to streamline processes and current usage patterns. Listing the number of users who will access the virtualized environment and analyzing current network traffic patterns will also be required.
   
• Determine which hardware and software to virtualize: Older servers, infrequently used servers, and multiprocessor servers dedicated to single-processor applications are good candidates for virtualization. Applications to virtualize might include those in a development or test environment, using a single processor, or those with low usage rates.
   
• Test and deploy the virtualized installation: After building or repurposing old server hardware, assembling necessary component hardware and integrating networking and storage systems, install the virtualization software and then migrate existing applications to their virtual environments. Before rolling out virtualization, test it so that any technical issues which surface are addressed before they impact the users and business productivity.

With the adoption of virtualization, small businesses will save money, enjoy increased flexibility for growth and find it easier to maintain their overall IT infrastructure. However, it is important for them not to lose sight of security and backup considerations. Solutions exist that enable small businesses to take full advantage of virtualization while preserving best practices for data protection, storage management, and disaster recovery.  A growing SMB with an expanding pool of servers, applications, and IT demands cannot afford to ignore virtualization. By following a few basic measures and criteria while implementing virtualization, SMBs will find that the technology is not difficult in day-to-day usage.

* Anand Naik is the Director of Technology Sales (India & SAARC), Symantec.
* The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.