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Virtualization and Hypervisors

Amazing happens when you use virtualization to streamline, scale and secure your IT environment.

From virtualizing servers to developing a software-defined data center (SDDC), CDW can help you create an IT environment that suits your business needs.

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Futureproofing Your Organization with Virtualization

Without virtualization, organizations set themselves up for inefficient resource utilization, difficulty in scaling their infrastructure, security concerns and even higher operational costs due to maintaining numerous physical servers. While many organizations are beginning to explore a container-first approach, we understand that each situation is unique. CDW’s personalized assessments will help you to determine the right path for your business. No matter the destination, we’ll not only help you understand the journey, our experts will build a roadmap to get you where you need to be, and we’ll be there every step of the way, giving you the confidence to make the right decision about what hypervisor, SDDC or modernization solutions will work best for your organization.

Virtualization streamlines disaster recovery, accelerates development, supports legacy applications, and offers flexibility through dynamic resource allocation. A centralized management system also makes administration easier, contributing to an agile, efficient, and resilient IT infrastructure. With several providers bundling full stack solutions, it’s critical to consult an expert to help you identify the most cost-effective strategy for your organization. CDW can also help you maximize deployment efficiency through our assessments, and show you how to avoid or minimize future cost increases.

The Benefits of Virtualization

Maximize Efficiency with Containerization and Virtualization

License and platform assessments are foundational components for efficiency. This is where the cost lies for containerization and virtualization. The right partner will enable you to effectively deploy, meaning a smaller footprint, more
consistency, scalability and immutability for your IT environment.

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Scale on Demand with Virtualization and the Cloud

Virtualization enables your organization to rapidly deploy and provision VMs to meet varying workloads, making it simple to scale your cloud environment up or down based on your current business needs.

Virtualization Enables AI and Automation Efforts

With features like snapshotting, centralized management, and compatibility across diverse environments, virtualization streamlines automation processes, accelerates AI development cycles, and supports the seamless integration of machine learning models into various computing environments.

Virtualization of landscape enabled by A.I.

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Speed Up Your Open-Source Initiatives

Virtualization enables developers to create isolated testing and development environments quickly. This facilitates experimentation with open-source software in a controlled setting, speeding up the development process.

The Hypervisor’s Role in Modernization

Modern hypervisors have capabilities that customers often don’t fully utilize. Hypervisors play a crucial role in infrastructure modernization by enabling virtualization, a key technology in modern IT environments, and CDW has long experience with all major hypervisors, including VMware, Nutanix and Azure Stack HCI. Hypervisors can empower your organization to maximize infrastructure efficiency by allowing multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server, paving the way for optimized resource utilization, scalability, and flexibility.

Better Resource Consolidation

At the most basic level, hypervisors allow multiple VMs to run on a single physical server, consolidating workloads, and reducing the number of physical servers needed.

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Agility and Scalability

Hypervisors simplify the management of infrastructure by providing centralized management interfaces, allowing administrators to better manage and monitor their whole environment.

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Stronger Isolation and Security

Virtualization through hypervisors provides strong isolation between different VMs, enhancing security and control.

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Business Continuity and Resiliency

With features like snapshots, cloning, and live migration, hypervisors make it easier to implement robust disaster recovery and high availability solutions.

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You Have Choices with Virtualization

The multitude of virtualization solutions available might seem daunting, but the right partner can help you understand what works best for your specific business needs. CDW will work with your organization to find the best fit for your IT environment. We have the expertise to assess customer needs at a micro and macro scale to determine where their applications fit into our available solutions and services. The choices available to you can help your organization become more cost-efficient and scalable, futureproofing you as technology continues to rapidly advance.

VM-based: In a VM-based environment, the traditional hardware components of a computer are simulated by software, enabling you to run multiple VMs on a single physical server. This approach can help you to consolidate resources, isolate your servers for stronger security and improve flexibility.
Container and KVM-based: If your organization requires applications and their dependencies to run consistently across different environments, a containerized approach may be the best fit. Alternatively, organizations needing stronger levels of isolation on servers with full operating system capabilities may consider a KVM approach.
Cloud Migration: Your organization may decide it’s time to move from an on-premises model to a cloud environment. A well-planned and executed cloud migration can minimize downtime, improve collaboration across teams, and position your organization to innovate further.
Create a Custom Approach: We understand that there is no “one size fits all” approach to virtualization. We’ll empower you to make the right choice when it comes to your unique business needs.

Four Reasons to Transition to a SDDC

A service-focused software defined data center (SDDC) gives CIOs the freedom to leave behind hardware issues and focus on proactive IT strategies.

IT Consolidation

Investing in a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution bundles computing, storage and networking all into one box.

Cost-Saving Potential

Relying on software-delivered services instead of physical hardware saves money and time and reduces energy usage.

Manageability

Software-defined systems are easier to manage than hardware systems that require manual updates and frequent maintenance.

Automation

Monitor, adjust, optimize and repair your virtual infrastructure and reduce the manual IT workload to increase business agility.

The Benefits of SDN, SD-WAN & Network Virtualization

Software-defined networks enable next-gen capabilities for LANs and WANs. SDNs and SD-WANs are fundamental for SDDC technology and enable critical network architecture with software controls.

Centralized network management: SDN and SD-WAN services provide a high-level view of the network as a whole, resulting in more agile, easier-to-manage networks and network devices controlled by a single administrator.
Greater speed and agility: By eliminating manual configurations updates, SDNs and SD-WANs reduce operating and hardware costs by virtualizing the controls for each network device.
Enhanced security: SDNs and SD-WANs empower IT managers to respond faster to cyber threats by providing real-time visibility to the network. Administrators can program the network to react to specific threats automatically.
Cloud integration: SDNs and SD-WANs make transitioning to the cloud simpler by extending your infrastructure and applications to the right technology.