Home > Disaster recovery applications drive SMB virtualization adoption

Interest in server virtualization among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) continues to rise. IT solution providers say successful solutions require education and handholding, but that the investment makes it easier to manage those accounts, especially for disaster recovery applications.
Jay Tipton, CEO of Technology Specialists, an IT services company in Fort Wayne, Ind., said more than 50% of his small and midsize business clients are now using virtualized servers, with some automatically opting for virtualized configurations. That makes it easier for his team to keep those servers up and running, especially if a problem occurs.

“It takes away the recovery problems; it’s much easier to do this [from a virtualized server] than from tape,” Tipton said. “It makes our life easier from a management standpoint.” He said virtualization also allows his technicians to keep tighter control of server configurations so that settings are less likely to be changed accidentally.

Guy Baroan, president of Baroan Technologies, an IT solution provider in Elmwood Park, N.J., said most of the server hardware that his company sells is virtualization-ready. It doesn’t make sense for cost-conscious businesses to buy a server for just one intended use.

“Everyone pretty much opts for this,” Baroan said. The free VMware server software, ESXi, has helped encourage smaller companies to explore virtualization technologies, he added.

While the solution providers interviewed for this market update are all deploying Microsoft Hyper-V in certain situations, their default recommendation for virtualization software is some flavour of the VMware platform.

Source: Computer World

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