What Virtualization Is and Why Nonprofits and Libraries Should Care: Part One

Don't know what virtualization software is or even care? Well, you should.

If you aren't using it directly in your office, I bet you are using it through one of your software providers without even knowing it. Is your website or email hosted somewhere outside your office? Do you use Salesforce.com or an online donor database? I bet they are using virtualization. Most large services who host software like the ones I mentioned above should be using this technology if they aren't already.

Still, you may ask, "Why should I care about what it is and how it works?"

1. Get smart. If you have a consultant, staff person, or volunteer who is setting up your computers and systems, you should at least be able to have a conversation about virtualization as an option and understand when it is appropriate to use it, including some pros and cons.

2. Save money. It is a technology that can save you money in two ways:

• Fewer computers you need to buy and maintain.
• Fewer machines means lower electricity bills.

"Businesses spend a lot of money powering unused server capacity. Virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, reducing the energy required to power and cool them," from What Is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?

Don't believe me? Read our second post about some of the hard data from our own virtualization experience.

3. Save time. Once set up it is often faster and easier to set up and support virtual machines.

4. Reduce waste. Desktop virtualization can utilize older equipment that would otherwise be discarded. This is good for the Earth as well as your wallet.

5. Save the Earth. Due to the reduced number of computers purchased and reduction in energy and electricity in creating, running, and disposing of them, virtualization is a technology that is good for the environment.

So, now that we (hopefully) have you convinced that there are good reasons to care, you probably want to know what it is.

Definition: Virtualization software enables a single computer to function as several virtual computers. You can install multiple operating systems (for example, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) on a single physical computer and they can each run independently, as if they were installed on their own physical computer. There is no visible difference to the applications or to the users. The two main types of virtualization are server virtualization and desktop virtualization.

Desktop virtualization can be useful to nonprofits, schools, and libraries.

In the case of desktop virtualization, the server does all the work for multiple desktop terminals. This harkens back to the days of mainframes and dumb terminals, but it gives each user a much more personal experience. Instead of having multiple computers each running their own operating system and own applications, the server hosts multiple operating systems and applications and allows users to access them via your network or the internet.

This technology is also called thin client computing, which you can learn a bit more about in this recently published article. Thin clients are most suitable for training labs, public access computers, and even administrative workstations. The terminals themselves run little or no software and so can be either older desktop computers or tiny new one-watt boxes in to which you plug in the keyboard, mouse, and monitor like those available from NComputing and Pano Logic.

In part two of this two-part series, we explain a bit more about server virtualization and give you the statistics from our own experience virtualizing our servers.

For more on virtualization, check out our new GreenTech virtualization page. This post is part of our November campaign to help you reduce your IT power use. Follow our Unpower Yourself Campaign and enter our contest by November 20 to be eligible to win an hour of tech consulting time, have your organization featured on TechSoup.org, or a gift card.

Thanks to Anna Jaeger on the GreenTech team for her contributions to these posts!

Photo: Craig A Rodway