ABSTRACT
Overview Still considered an ‘emergent technology,’ virtualization has been in use since the mid-1960s (CDW 2010), and is well established in the mainframe and minicomputer world as a common way of sharing resources (ISACA 2010). Œe adoption of virtualization and the way the industry is currently using it is making the term popular, much like Windows, which has become a household name today. Until recently, there was no software package available, much less a need for one, to establish true resource sharing on servers common to a data center. Now that virtualization has been proliferating throughout data centers, companies have been able to take advantage of the technology on Intel-based servers, virtualizing everything from in-house utility servers to enterprise content management systems. With advancements in virtualization technology moving to the workstation, disk, and CPU, virtualization has been revolutionizing data centers, allowing companies to realize major wins, such as cost savings and streamlined recovery plans.
