The information technology sector has undergone numerous changes over the past 15 years. Computational systems that occupied large rooms within companies today have laptops and we can do almost anything with a good mobile phone. Even the fax machine, which emerged in the meantime, it is barely remembered by those attending the university. Everything moved very quickly and for the better.

Nowadays, everyone is more poetic, or perhaps smarter. So much so that the term “green IT” took time, though actually it suggests, to some extent, the benefits of responsible and rational use of natural resources. But the most curious, in recent times, is to see a CIO asking about the meaning of “cloud computing“. After all, if the term has been pronounced by the chief executives of Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Dell, something important lies ahead. Well, this is not always an absolute truth.

The term “cloud computing” has been defined in many ways, indeed even by its author – still unknown. The most plausible explanation is that, unlike that suggestive image of computers flying through the air, it comes to ways of running their base of services ‘in the air‘, using an area already well exploited by mobile operators. The idea is to give someone access to your data or your company’s data without necessarily being physically close. Total Remoting…

If virtualization, which proposes not only the proliferation of servers, but other IT resources such as databases, networks and desktops, has not been fully realized and exploited entirety by most of the companies. Cloud computing will certainly take time to fall into the full understanding and enjoyment.

Moreover, the most common methods used today to protect the virtual environment does not offer exactly the same security guarantees in physical environments. This has required constant improvement, as investment in Data Center to have an automated backup, ready to accelerate the processes of storage and retrieval of information with a low drive, or even virtualization backup.

So before you let your thoughts fly in ‘cloud‘, it is wise to think and invest in a technology infrastructure that is viable and ready to streamline your company’s business.

When talking about VMware virtualization,  a few years ago nobody thought about how this technology would become complex: today’s large companies and SMEs have sufficiently large virtualized environments for better security.

Today, virtualization has become a key enabler to the IT and business for companies. In the initial stage, it was primarily used to consolidate web hosting servers and IT resources to save cost and space, and reduce energy consumption. Since then, this technology has found many more possibilities of use and new applications. Companies exploit it as a way to enhance business continuity, to maximize operational flexibility, provisioning, testing, changes in management or to support disaster recovery services.

At the server level, virtualization separate (separates) the physical resources of the operating system (OS) and applications. It breaks the rigid link between hardware and software, and allows multiple instances of an operating system and various software applications to run on the same hardware support. In other words, virtualization extracts and organizes the operating system and applications software in a virtual machine (VM). The entire “package” of virtual hardware – CPU, memory and network, OS and applications – becomes a single software files (file). The machines are hardware independent and can be managed as documents, with the convenience of copying and pasting.

The VM monitor, or hypervisor provides access to physical resources to multiple virtual machines or guests. Hardware resources are dynamically allocated to groups for workloads, while the VMs are isolated (they do not influence each other) and encapsulated (easy to store, move, etc.). This allows you to create a series of savings, thanks to less use of hardware, electricity and space systems and infrastructures. At the same time, it reduces costs related to personnel, as well as the complexity, implementation time and management.

One way to understand the impact of virtualization on the IT industry is to compare it to the Electronic Banking : once the money is deposited in the physical system and converted into bytes, it increases the speed of business. The money can be moved in all parts of the world at very high speeds. Transforming physical feature information (bytes), virtualization brings a new level of efficiency and flexibility in IT. In particular, virtualization makes it possible for faster and more flexible provisioning and managing of the entire IT infrastructure.

With virtualization, you can reduce the actual costs and boost productivity, resulting in savings in terms of number of servers, carbon footprint, power consumption and cooling requirements. If you are  trying to protect the environment, improve the reputation of the brand or enhance competitiveness, virtualization is a very interesting proposal.

Virtualization allows organizations to leverage the resources of the system by consolidating applications on fewer physical servers. As the demand for infrastructure in the data center changes, in response to peaks in traffic, the physical resources that are not immediately required are switched off automatically, ensuring more efficient use of resources.

To make a successful virtualization implementation, CIOs need to know how to get what they want and determine if the technology is good for business. Within any organization, disruptive or revolutionary initiatives have the highest probability of failure. Instead of approaching virtualization as a gradual evolution, companies can increase their success rate.

Migrate To A Virtual Environment

Virtualization is becoming a commodity, and should be considered as such. With the maturing of the market, CIOs are better prepared and better understand the potential and limitations of technology and what they can expect from a service provider. And it is responsibility of the supplier to provide details concerning best practices, and companies should not refrain from asking all necessary questions.

Determining what percentage of the load of a company can realistically be virtualized is a first thing to understand. We rarely see companies that migrate immediately most of the workload in a virtual environment, it is common practice to start with the less critical activities, experience with the platform and then increase the loads and also include mission-critical applications.

And workloads should migrate further once you have confidence in the platform and the support offered by the cloud computing service provider.

Rather than considering virtualization as a standalone project, companies should look more closely at the internal processes that may be impacted by the adoption of virtualization technologies. Otherwise, the risk is that, customers consider that the expected benefits of virtualization, especially in terms of improved IT agility, do not become reality. In other words, often the main obstacle to the successful adoption of virtualization is not the technology, but the processes that surround it.

This includes provisioning and changing the management processes. Each application involved may compete for processing resources and it is important for companies to adopt software that provides greater visibility in the architecture to determine how IT applications are operating. Increased visibility enables administrators to anticipate conflicts and monitor performance to ensure that critical applications receive the priority they deserve and that performance levels are met.

Emerging technologies such as cloud computing, mega-storage, intelligent software and all applications for the use of mobile telephony, for example, still have enough room to grow. Part of the market does not yet know how to use available technologies to transform business and get the work done at higher level.

According to me, The Eight Technologies That can Transform Businesses are:

Internet as a tool for customer relationship: It has never been so quick to understand, “what it takes to meet the needs of loyal consumers of products and services?”. The Internet and related technologies promotes this interaction and results in maximizing the potential of each company.

Social Networks: It is being increasingly realized that social networking has already became a part of the routine work of many professionals. Despite being a controversial issue within companies, it is necessary that employees use their work computers to access social networks. In many cases, not only in spare time. In many businesses, it can engage consumers in product design, testing, and after the sale including viral marketing.

Cloud Computing Services: It’s a business model where the customer has access to a variety of services, applications and solutions guaranteed by the provider. The idea is to allow to get access to data or company data in a way that it works remotely. It is certainly not only transforming the business but their own work environment as well.

Green IT: The company that is not aligned to display most discussed issues in the globalized world and not have their brand associated with issues such as sustainable growth, rational use of natural resources, respect for the environment and energy efficiency, will be the subject to be viewed by the market. Common initiatives include reducing paper printing, increased use of e-documents and data center outsourcing.

Virtualization: With virtualization, the physical equipment start to behave like software, enabling significant cost savings and redirection of human resources for more strategic business areas – such as creating new products and services, or programs for the welfare of employees. There are a lot of experts who recognize virtualization as a kind of precursor of cloud computing solutions.

Outsourcing Database: Even during the international economic crisis, outsourcing data center was a major investment, done by U.S. companies, according to surveys on intent. In India, it is also a smart and viable option, since it frees the customer cost with property, building maintenance, energy, security, upgrading equipment, hiring staff with expertise in specialized management, etc.. The main gain, however, is that the customer will have more time and resources available to devote to the business itself.

M-Commerce: The mobile payments are being made possible. Despite many tools are still undergoing testing, pay a bill using the mobile phone offers the same level of security of a banking transaction via the Internet, or more. It is a procedure that is very similar to the debit. Just bring the phone to an authorized reader (POS), and get it connected to a terminal. The information is transmitted over the phone and payment information is processed quickly and securely. Each time, more financial commitments would no longer represent an obstacle to the lives of people.

Security / Monitoring: In addition to safety devices, with a simple monitoring system, it can resolve disputes in various sectors and services necessary for the maintenance of a company. This is the case of NOC, which are connected to the network management Database of Company, lets you control many physical dedicated servers and services in real time. The system can detect possible failures or interruptions of links, routers and servers, sending alerts and allow to reduce the incidence of problems.

If we had said this a few years ago, it might not be so believable, but virtualization technology has become widespread, almost essential in many contexts.

I believe that automation of systems is essential today, more with the servers that provide cloud computing services: the number of machines in data centers continues to increase, so not just automate the creation and management of VMs, we must think of the rest.

The problems associated with virtualization in the data center

In a virtual data center, the operating speed of change has increased. Virtual machines are reconfigured, loads of computing resources are moved, and applications grow and shrink rapidly. We know that the continuous changes increase the risk of errors, analysts estimate that 60/80 percent of data center problems are caused by mismanagement.

How can we ensure the stability of data center, maximizing the advantage of the flexibility offered by virtualization?

Virtualization promises to improve the operation of data centers and no doubt it does. The server consolidation provides significant benefits. The ability to migrate without blocking loads significantly facilitates the management of the hardware. The ability to deploy new virtual machines in a very short time compared to physical machines makes it faster and more effective development and deployment of applications.

The benefits of virtualization, however, bear some costs associated with it. The hypervisor adds another layer of complexity to the stack software. Imposes requirements on the servers, the storage system and especially on the network. While the hypervisor provides a little ‘automation to simplify server hosting operations, the environment around the virtual cluster has made it easier. In a recent survey conducted among customers, 70% said that virtualization adds additional pressure on network operations.

It is easy to understand the origin of this pressure. Each initiative is surrounded by virtual physical resources:

1. Storage systems.
2. Users, workstations and networks of partners.
3. Load balancers and security devices.
4. Tools for remote administration of servers.
5. Physical servers.
6. Hypervisor competition that are not compatible.
7. Private clouds, lab systems, and other specialized clusters.

The boundary between each of these elements is the virtual environment where mistakes can happen while operating. Both boundaries can be the cause: the configuration of the hypervisor may be incorrect, or the environment outside might be set incorrectly. When there is a performance issue, the information from both sides of the border must be integrated to find a solution. When new applications are implemented, both sides must be pre-approved. Errors and inconsistencies occur in three different ways: in the form of application performance problems, delays in the operational procedures and activities that waste staff time. Each data center has its own unique path, here are some examples.

What are the main problems?

Application performance becomes poor or discontinuous

The parameters of access to ports and the network cannot match. There are many parameters that affect performance, including the port duplex mode, network QoS settings, access lists, firewalls and more.

Some “rogue devices” may be connected to the network with IP protocol settings that are incorrect or improper devices that disrupt production.
Configurations that “deviate” from the best practices, every time the manual procedures are followed incorrectly or when standards are incomplete. Consequently, new and older devices have very different settings, resulting in unpredictable performance.

Requests for changes are taking too long:

When you migrate a virtual server for upgrades or maintenance, its destination must have the correct network settings. A set-up of manual port delays, especially when compared to the almost instantaneous speed of the hot virtual migration.

When created, updated or tested with a disaster recovery site, its network settings must be verified to match up with the master site. A manual verification leads to delays.

When you add new servers to expand a system of load balancing, many devices, including the physical switch, firewall and load balancer may require meticulous rolling upgrades. The manual configuration adds delays, typically takes a much higher time to run a new virtual server.

The staff wasting time on routine tasks:

• Daily activities such as the allocation of IP addresses must be coordinated. It can be difficult to identify errors in an environment of constant change.
• The problems often involve troubleshooting logs and alerts that are correlated from multiple sources. With virtual machines, there is often a gap between the physical and virtual systems, in which data need to be matched manually.
• If an unauthorized party makes a move or a change, you will need to waste time in re-checking the work (or worse, fix the errors)
• The reporting and verification of compliance is in itself a nuisance, and virtual systems add complexity.
• In a virtual data center, the changes are more complex and occur most often because of the flexibility of virtual machines. The errors become more expensive, and can happen more frequently.

But there is a way to master the complexity and minimize errors, that does not require a complete reorganization of the infrastructure. It is sufficient to optimize the existing infrastructure with automation. If a platform configuration management can be integrated into the network of data centers, it can run automated procedures, all the problems listed above can be solved. An automated platform configurations can be equipped with a “gold standard” for all the items on the perimeter of the virtual system. Deviations from these standards are due to rogue or misconfigured devices, can be prevented, repaired or isolated. The gold configurations can be applied in a single pass, resulting in a rapid and effective response to change requests. The troubleshooting process can be accelerated when the data from physical systems is correlated with the data of the virtual systems.

Authorization rules and delegation can block unapproved changes and check those approved rules.

Automation is needed in the network around the hypervisor to realize the full benefits of virtual systems. A network platform residing in the data center management and automation can minimize errors, promote flexibility, and cut the hidden costs of virtualization.

With the growth of the value of clouds for some IT solutions providers are beginning to take an interest in what exactly it meant. In the end, many of you have long offered clients to use host-applications, which, in essence, cloud services are under another name.

So you already know what are the benefits that are provided by cloud computing services to your customers: a small initial capital costs, or complete absence, pay only the actual services received, scalability and flexibility. For you, the main advantages of cloud services are a constant revenue stream, deep penetration in the business of clients and flexibility to tailor services to customer needs.

So if you have some time provide Hosted Exchange services with or related to backup and restore data, you are completely forgivable to ignore the talk about clouds as the next hype in the IT industry. Or unforgivable?

Enough to have in its arsenal, one or two services such as SaaS, although they could well help you prepare for the era of cloud services. Looking to the future, customers will increasingly move their infrastructure into the cloud. And if all that you can offer, is the e-mail host system, you face the loss of customers.

Since virtualization, private clouds and services based on public clouds every day are becoming more popular. IT has a long history of adaptations and innovations, and cloud is a important chapter in this story. If you skip this chapter, it can have fatal consequences for your business.

Large corporations such as Verizon and Google, end users are bombarded with advertisements on its cloud products. As this onslaught of more and more customers will be prepared to cloud computing and would like to have more services.

Fortunately for solution providers, you have plenty of options to create a full set of cloud services. Let’s say you have to offer Hosted services through Exchange. What can you supplement them? It makes sense to explore other products Hosted on Microsoft, such as server, database and maintenance of desktop systems, to create a cloud menu.

Of course, you are not limited to products of Microsoft, Cisco and Dell. You and all the solutions provider should also not be overly suspicious of large corporations. In particular, although Microsoft has achieved record sales through the channel, the manufacturer has caused some confusion among its partners on their role in providing cloud services, such as Azure and BPOS. However, Microsoft’s strategy in connection with the clouds deserves a separate article.

Solutions providers should also pay attention to host the infrastructure and services such as “platform as a service” (PaaS), as well as to private cloud using virtualization technology and reminding the public clouds, which allow you to take advantage of the cloud environment inside the network perimeter.

Many manufacturers also offer in addition to its virtual cloud product technical support. This means that you can give it to function manufacturer partners and focus on growing your business.

So when it comes to clouds, then, yes, there is no shortage of publicity. But this does not mean that solutions providers cannot simply ignore it and do its routine. Clouds are a source of change, and therefore require that providers of solutions once again adjusted to the ongoing large-scale shifts in the industry.

While attending a event on Cloud services, an IT manager told me that he was already using cloud for a long time. I got interested because I always try cases of success or failure. The failure is very interesting because I learn a lot from mistakes.

When questioned, he told me he had almost all their servers virtualized. The questioning continued, but the answers stop there. Yes, that’s it. In the view of IT manager, virtualized servers meant to be in cloud services.

Unfortunately, I had to frustrate him and show that virtualization is not a single cloud. It is only the first step, provided there is a strategy to get there. If virtualization is the ultimate goal, it will not reach the cloud. Cloud architectures demand changes in technology, e-governance services, funding models and relationships with users and customers.

Many companies have adopted virtualization in order to consolidate their servers and reduce hardware costs and energy. Or even to prevent the construction of a new data center, the proliferation of physical servers.

However, soon discovered that pass, for example, of 100 physical servers to 50 servers – but with 300 or more logical servers virtualized – create immense management problems with consequent cost increases.

My suggestion to him was to take the following steps:

Virtualization abstracts the applications and infrastructure can be the basis for building a cloud strategy.
We still have to adopt the standardization and automation of computing environment. It is a gradual process.

With a virtualized environment, we can focus on operational improvements, creating mechanisms that enable a provisioning and allocation of resources more quickly and automatically. The user himself can request computing resources via a portal.

Of course at that stage we will have to rethink the bureaucratic procedures and manuals that we adopt today. When a request fails to pass the server administrator for a human and becomes automatic (via self-service portal), and the provisioning time is no longer than two or three weeks to just minutes, the procedures should be reviewed.

The adoption of cloud services should follow a well-defined strategy. Overall, a great company starts with a private cloud, in an exploratory manner, with certain well-defined and restricted strategy.

A good example is the development environment and testing. It is a good way to start putting the cloud into practice. The lessons learned will be very useful, since the spread of the cloud model to other contexts, such as the production are important.

Cloud brings the review of the relationship-user data center, including allowing a more accurate view of resource consumption and thus making room for a revision of funding the company.

The self-service opens up new challenges from the perspective of security and management. For example, in a test environment in the cloud, any developer can allocate a virtual server or are there clear rules on who can allocate these resources.

Very well, begin to explore a private cloud. The next step will probably be adopting hybrid clouds, with some applications and services running on public clouds. New challenges are emerging, ranging from security to integration. Inter-operate as an application that is in a private cloud with one that is in a public cloud.

Why think of hybrid clouds?

Often you will need to deal with peak periods that do not justify the purchase of assets (dedicated server) which will become idle below.

An example?

The development environment itself, and testing can go through periods of extraordinary peak and short duration. Allow it to expand temporarily to a public cloud causes no need to buy new servers.

Another point we should consider is that many applications and services can run, even in public clouds, they meet the criteria of security and corporate governance. In this case, the hybrid model becomes constant. In my opinion, the majority of medium to large businesses will move to that model in the coming years.

This year, we see an acceleration significant use of cloud providers. In an exploratory way, it’s true, but as we learn to use it and feel its benefits, the rate of adoption will be much accelerated.

Some estimates suggest that over the next year about two thirds of large companies will be using private clouds to a greater or lesser degree. Hybrid clouds will be the next step and soon after we lose the fear of using public clouds.

Therefore, IT managers are facing a future that is already doing this: the enterprise in cloud, i.e., the post-virtualization.

The question that arises is: are we prepared?

In a recent discussion with a couple of friends, the question arose:

What are the main challenges for putting ideas into practice with cloud computing services?

Some of the questions that were discussed are, in general, common to most companies and so we’ll share them here.

Adopting cloud computing is not a simple matter of implementing a virtualization system. Indeed it is still much simplified, with companies implementing virtualization and claiming that they are deploying cloud computing. The formula for cloud computing is virtualization + standardization + automation. Virtualization is only the first step of the journey.

Some of the challenges that IT managers will face in this journey towards cloud computing involves everything from the pace, intensity and extent of the use of cloud to changes in the structure and organization of IT, with new skills and responsibilities, changes in governance models and setting budgets, and relationships with internal customers and external providers.

The first step is to consider cloud as IT strategy, as it was the shift from centralized environment for client-server for about 15 years ago. Companies that ignore the client-server model and insisted to stay too long in the centralized environment, had to run after the injury. Lessons Learned. So the attitude of facing the IT cloud computing should be proactive and not reactive.

IT must identify where the adoption of cloud may bring bigger and faster benefits to the company, including thinking “out-of-the-box“, creating new opportunities for generating revenue for the organization. So IT must be clearly identified with the demands of business and the potential of cloud computing.

But ideas to be implemented need a financial boost. The adoption of cloud must be substantiated by a detailed analysis and ROI (return on investment), TCO (total cost of ownership) and the value of opportunities for innovative products or processes. It should be clear that when we talk about cloud computing we are talking about various cloud services as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, which are in different development stages.

SaaS is already in operation for quite some time, but PaaS is taking its first steps now. This often means that the costs and risks of pioneering studies should be embedded in for adoption.

The pace and extent of adoption of cloud in the company depends heavily on its culture of innovation and risk. Companies that are more averse to risk should begin with cloud services as SaaS applications offer the least risk to the business.

The dissemination strategy can and should be gradual.

By December 2011 – all newly planned or performing major IT acquisitions must complete an ASSETS alternatives That includes analysis based cloud computing the alternative part of Their budget submissions.

By December 2012 – all IT ASSETS making enhancements to an existing investment must complete an alternatives analysis That includes cloud computing based alternative to part of Their budget submissions.

By December 2013 – IT Investments in all steady-state must complete an alternatives analysis That includes cloud computing based alternative to part of Their budget submissions.

I have not done any formal surveys, but generally there is a consensus that 10% to 40% of the applications that run on-premise companies can migrate to the cloud in a short time. The role of IT can identify which of these applications make sense to migrate to the cloud.

Finally, there is still a challenge that is not being given due weight: the monitoring and management of resources in the cloud. Cloud computing significantly changes the way of IT resources which can be acquired and used. In general, at least in the coming years we will see hybrid environments in enterprises with on-premise systems running on dedicated servers, some running into clouds in other private and public cloud hosting services.

Manage, monitor and ensure interoperability of this complex environment is not and will not be a simple task. The IT department will gradually need to act as asset manager to manage relationships with cloud providers. New skills and roles must be purchased as cloud services architects. The governance models should be adjusted to the flexibility, resilience and self-service features of the cloud.

The summary of the opera is that the transition to the cloud will require much planning. In retrospect, if we look at the data center that kept so centralized systems and compare them with today’s data centers that run Web systems and client-server to hundreds or thousands of servers, we will see huge differences. And the differences between these data centers today and the morning clouds will be equal to or greater.

Therefore, we must start to plan this new scenario from today.

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization in computing – the process of on-set of computing resources, or their logical association that provides any advantages over the original configuration. This new virtual view of resources is not limited to the implementation, geographic location or physical configuration of component parts. Perhaps it sounds too complicated for an untrained person, so try to be translated into “human language”.

Development of solutions based on virtualization, many vendors do, I would say – pretty much everything. After all, the logical drives, which are just partitions on a single physical hard drive – is also virtualization. SMP Technology, which allows programs to submit two or more physical processors as a single virtual – is also virtualization.

It is distinguishes between three aspects of virtualization: server virtualization, presentation virtualization and application virtualization. With virtualization concepts, they are more or less familiar to almost all system administrators: the most striking example of it – Terminal Services Microsoft Windows Cloud Hosting Servers. Application virtualization – the creation of a special, isolated environment within the operating system to run individual applications, the theme is very big and interesting, for a single long article. Here and below the word “virtualization,” we shall mean server virtualization. Windows Server 2008 adds built-in support for virtualization (hypervisor), called Hyper-V. In Windows Server 2008 R2 hypervisor was substantially modified, and became known as Hyper-V 2.0.

Let’s take a closer look at server virtualization. What is it? Speaking in plain language – is the creation of software-emulated environment, which imitates the hardware of the physical computer: CPU, RAM, hard disk, I / O devices. Further, on this virtual server can be running (to be called “guest», «Guest OS»), and some applications. All this will work as a full server, but it is not clear: it will exist virtually, inside the OS on a physical server (for this OS uses the term, Host OS). Moreover, within a single physical server can run simultaneously on two or more, and sometimes – even dozens of virtual servers.

For what it might be useful? Initially, the virtual machines are used only for testing purposes: to conduct experiments with them is much easier, quicker and most importantly – cheaper than a real server. I’m sure many sysadmin ever in my practice experience anything in a virtual machine. But now virtualization has become increasingly used in industrial applications. The fact there are substantial reasons, although as in every decision – have a place to be and disadvantages. About it – more.

Advantages and disadvantages of virtualization

The most important thing: the use of virtualization allows a more rational allocation of hardware resources of servers. Indeed, because most servers on the strength of 10% of its resources – processing power, memory, etc. Virtualization allows you to place a few little busy servers to use one server to be loaded a little harder. It is clear that a single server, even a little more powerful – will be cheaper than some separate.

Likewise it is logical to assume that one server will consume much less power and occupy less space in the rack (or on the desk or under your desk – well, that’s who – like). Another very important advantage – ease of administration. Any administrator is often faced with the need to go into the server and make some kind of manipulation directly on the console of the server itself, when it “fell”. The use of virtualization allows you to access the consoles of virtual servers directly from the administrator’s workstation, and the need for trips to the server virtually eliminates the addition – are greatly simplified backup and disaster recovery of servers. All administrators know how it is difficult to make a working backup system partition server: it is often necessary to buy additional software and in some cases – to restart the server. The use of virtualization allows you to backup server disk directly on the fly, transparent to users, and recovery is reduced to just copy a few files.

But, unfortunately, any stick – always double-edged sword, and besides all the advantages, the solutions based on virtualization has a significant drawback: lowering the overall system reliability. Indeed, since the same physical server simultaneously run multiple virtual machines – that the failure of the server itself (for example, “burned” processor or RAID-controller) will lead to the simultaneous failure of all virtual machines running on it, and accordingly – all services that they provide. So, together with the solutions based on virtualization is advisable to use fault-tolerant solutions, in particular – on the basis of fault-tolerant clusters. More information about this question below.

There is one drawback, on the only virtualization on Windows Server 2008: The hardware requirements include a 64-bit processor with hardware support for virtualisation and DEP. So, a lot of older servers with 32-bit processors, we simply do not fit. Nevertheless, to buy a server that does not meet the technical requirements of Hyper-V is currently difficult, because the servers with the old models of processors were recently removed from production by all major service providers.