Most small to medium businesses run on computers, and those computers are often backed up by servers; a machine that serves the information needs of your business from one central location.
But like many things, servers are going virtual, which means there are many additional benefits gained that can save your business even more time and money.
Affordable and forward-thinking, virtual servers are key to accommodating and facilitating your business’s growth. By replacing your physical server with a virtual one, you will save your business time and money through reductions in cost and downtime, as well as enhanced efficiency in day-to-day and long-term business operations.
Check out the ways we’ve found virtual servers improve SMEs, below.
Key benefits of a virtual server
1. reduce costs
2. reduce downtime
3. increase efficiency
Reduce costs
Investing in virtual servers will reduce expenditure on your I.T. budget.
Virtual servers allow you to consolidate the total number of servers, cutting costs on infrastructure that requires installation and regular maintenance, as well as the initial capital investment.
Some software, like Microsoft Virtual Server, allows you to run multiple servers within a single server platform, reducing the costs associated with set-up, running, and maintaining multiple servers, as well as granting flexibility to your I.T. department.
Virtual servers can also do more with less; compared to physical servers, virtual servers run at 80% utilisation, whereas physical servers only reach between 5 and 15% utilisation.
Not only that, virtual servers take less time to set-up, as standard configurations are pre-configured and stored, making it a simple matter to get things running.
Reduce downtime
In the event your business experiences downtime, virtual servers will help you bring everything back up to speed. Thanks to this, virtual servers minimise downtime as data back-ups can be easily replicated and loaded, making disaster recovery and planning more efficient. Downtime is costly for SMEs, which is why the ability to quickly bounce back through virtual servers is a great solution.
Increase efficiency
The most significant benefit of virtual servers is the efficiency they grant to SMEs.
By nature of being online, virtual servers allow you to manage your office space, reduce power consumption, and save money. They also enjoy enhanced flexible, as the CPU memory and disks can be changed within minutes, compared to physical servers where upgrades cost considerable amounts of time and money in ordering, installing, and testing.
Server resources are also allocated on-demand, meaning they can be directed to where they are needed, when they are needed, and standardisation means that servers can be easily replicated, which translates to faster deployment.
Reductions in cost, downtime, and increases in efficiency are three of the main points businesses strive for, and they can all be found in virtual servers.
If your business is at the point where information management is getting to be too much to handle, consider investing in a virtual server.
For more information, talk to our experts at Advanced Computers. You can contact us here.