Investing in servers and hardware can become a difficult task for small businesses with limited IT budgets and resources. It is then vital to consider virtual machines and server virtualization in order to maximise value.
Indeed, virtual machines (VMs) are virtual computers or servers that can be hosted onsite or in the cloud, enabling SMBs to use scalable, on-demand resources at a lower cost as well as to host multiple servers on one physical device. Virtual machines are also not limited to servers as you can control and target drives that live in software, and manage users and operating environments.
Virtualization is slowly growing in importance as it helps increase hardware efficiency and reduce costs for small businesses, thanks to the hypervisor that removes the dependency between workload and hardware. With this, the computer’s operating system and applications do not dependent on any particular physical hardware.
Moreover, virtualization helps reduce downtime, which could be very beneficial as more than one-third of businesses reported to have lost customers due to downtime, and 17% lost sales. Due to this, around 20% believe that their businesses are not prepared to address and prevent unexpected downtime. Virtual machines can then avoid that as they can be migrated to different hardware or the cloud seamlessly.
In order to choose the best server for a small business, you need to research server specs based on the applications you will need it to run, determine the best location for the server, calculate the budget for purchase and setup, as well as select the server type.
