Cloud computing takes existing physical servers and creates virtualized servers to exist on top of them.
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"Basically you're encapsulating an operating system and applications within a virtual machine instead of separate physical servers, " said Marks.
"The result is that a hundred physical servers turns into seven, " says Steve Kaplan, chief executive of the IT consultancy AccessFlow.
Physical servers are vulnerable and there are many things that can happen to harm them (including but not limited to environmental issues and natural disasters).
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And given their focus on uptime, these managers are, perhaps justifiably, concerned with the risks of putting too many applications on too few physical servers.
For the most part most data centers are operating in the pre-virtual world, in which the pace of change is governed by the rate at which physical servers can come and go.
Given a 60 percent load capacity on average (again, to avoid hot spots), our example would yield an average of 13 physical servers per rack (assume 42u racks) and 520 physical servers.
Taking the same 40 racks, if pushed to 90 percent capacity on average, and upgrading the existing server base over the next 2 years to 1U servers would support 1, 520 physical servers.
If we assume 15 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) as an average growth target, in 10 years our small IT room would need to support at least 160 racks with over 2, 000 physical servers, and would require almost 5, 000 square feet of floor space.
That IaaS product is CloudForms, which provides a policy and governance structure, so that enterprises can move to the cloud safely and securely, and run and manage applications across physical and virtual servers, and in many types of public clouds.
Google's offer was to accelerate access to its own content by co-locating its computer servers in the physical facilities of broadband providers.
Improve physical security of critical systems, especially domain name and root servers.
Backing up your personal PC to external media might still be a novel concept for some, but any IT manager fresh out of school can tell you that regularly backing up mission-critical servers -- and storing those backups in multiple physical locations -- isn't merely important, it's practically non-negotiable, and it only becomes that much more critical before undertaking hardware maintenance.
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Today, virtualization allows servers to be converted to software "images" that can be consolidated and hosted on a single physical server, increasing a data center's efficiency by about 25%, Kerravala estimates.
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