Around the world, forward-looking IT organizations are turning rigid data centers into agile, virtualized environments. The question isn’t, “Should we virtualize?” Instead, it is, “How can we transition to a virtualized infrastructure in a predictable, low-risk, cost-effective manner right now?”
The decision to move to a virtualized environment is easy. Knowing how, and exactly what tools and services you will need is the challenge

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. Operating system virtualization is the use of software to allow a piece of hardware to run multiple operating system images at the same time. The technology got its start on mainframes decades ago, allowing administrators to avoid wasting expensive processing power.

• Network virtualization is a method of combining the available resources in a network by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels, each of which is independent from the others, and each of which can be assigned (or reassigned) to a particular server or device in real time. The idea is that virtualization disguises the true complexity of the network by separating it into manageable parts; much like your partitioned hard drive makes it easier to manage your files.

• Storage virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in storage area networks (SAN’s).

• Server virtualization is the masking of server resources (including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems) from server users. The intention is to spare the user from having to understand and manage complicated details of server resources while increasing resource sharing and utilization and maintaining the capacity to expand later.