Virtualisation’ is definately one of the current buzz words today; however it is often used to generalise about a plethora of technologies, which at best can sometimes be daunting and confusing. To many it simply means server Virtualisation such as technologies such as VMware, Citrix, Parrallels, Hyper-V etc.

Virtualisation does not just consist of server virtualisation, it also applies to the network, storage, application and desktop environments too.

What is Server Virtualisation

Out of all  of the different types of virtualization server virtualisation is the most familar. When people refer to "virtualisation", they are usually refer to server virtualisation.

In simple terms virtualisation allows you to run multiple guest computers on a single host computer. The guest computers function as though stand-alone and running on dedicated hardware. By doing this, you gain all the benefits of any type of virtualization: portability of guest virtual machines, reduced operating costs, reduced administrative overhead, server consolidation, testing & training, disaster recovery benefits, and more.

At SDT we have endevored to unravel the complexities of virtualisation and have detailed the features of two of the major players for server virtualisation; VMware and Citrix.Xen Server.