X86 Server Virtualization For High Availability And Disaster Recovery

To date, the primary driver behind the adoption of server virtualization has been consolidation. But as enterprises gain experience with the technology, additional uses and benefits are surfacing. According to a recent Forrester study, 49% of enterprises surveyed that are implementing or interested in x86 server virtualization indicate that improving disaster recovery/business continuity continues to be a very important motivation for adoption. Server virtualization facilitates a rapid — or even automatic — restart of applications after an IT failure, and when used in conjunction with data replication between data centers, it can restart applications at a recovery site following a primary site failure. In particular, x86 server virtualization can improve the availability of business-critical systems that are important to the business but not critical enough to warrant the investment in expensive and complex resiliency technologies like fault-tolerant hardware or clustering.