The Power of Virtualization

For those of you who have not heard of virtualization as it pertains to computing, it is the concept of separating the notion that only a single instance of an operating system can run on a single hardware platform at a given time. Through the use of virtualization software, multiple operating systems may run independently of each other while using the same physical hardware. There are many benefits to this technology for personal use and for enterprise applications. Although I have had limited exposure to the enterprise portion of virtualization, I have used VM technologies on PC and Apple hardware for quite some time. Have you wanted to upgrade to Vista but use software that is only capatible with XP? Do you have a Mac and wish that you could install some of your favorite Windows software? By using different flavors of virtualization software, you can have your cake and eat it too! I currently have VirtualPC installed on a PC running Vista so that I can run and instance of Windows XP. I use a piece of software at work that only works on XP and this use of VM allows me to do this. Also, on my Macbook’s, I have VMWare Fusion running on them so that I can use Windows Vista and a flavor of Ubuntu on the same hardware platform. Does anyone else utilize virtualization software? Anyone have any questions or comments about the subject?