Virtualization Linux and Windows

I saw this article today and had to post about it. Virtualization is a buzz word going on around the IT industry right now. I can assure you it is more then buzz. Every IT Admin has to be excited about the concept of "virtual" copies of their critical servers. Instead of ghost images or other files which only help in failure virtualized copies can do that and more. Think if you needed to install updates to a server that cannot go down but you have 2 servers. You can open a virtual copy of the key server while the other is down for maintenance. This type of technology coupled with programs which will allow quick updates of these images will create a powerful case for 0 downtime. As hardware redundancy gets better each year finally I believe we have a usable solution on the software side.

I suggest all IT and IT interested people go to vmware.com and try their demo software to get familiar with this technology.

Oh, the article. This caught my eye because I, like many in IT, see the value in running Linux machines. A more stable, more secure and more cost effective solution. What do you do about the need for windows apps? Well windows linux tie-in programs have been around and maybe let you play a very old PC game none were ready for business deployment. Virtualization may change this as well. If Microsoft was willing to loosen its licensee restrictions on OS copies this would be even nicer. Think of a different world where your core infrastructure is all Linux and you run small virtualizations of Windows for any programs which cannot make the switch to Linux. There is an interesting idea here...