VIRTUALIZATION

How do you explain Virtual Servers to a layperson?

I am often asked to explain complicated technical issues to people that have not had the pleasure of reading thousands of hours of help screens and white papers.

In layperson's terms, imagine you are going to give a speech in front of a thousand people. They have loaded into the room and are waiting for your words of wisdom. However, you are in a traffic jam and running two hours late. So what do you do? Make the audience wait for you to arrive? Or, imagine having a person as capable as you standing by in the auditorium -- now, you email him the speech and he delivers it to the audience. (Yes, let's assume for my example, that the person is as capable of a speaker as you, but perhaps slightly shorter).

In my example above, the audience (i.e. your company users) gets the content of the speech (i.e. the data and applications) regardless of the person (i.e. the fileserver) that is delivering it. As in the case above, the sponsor of the speech (your IT department) has to "introduce" (i.e. Boot the virtual server) the new speaker.

(c) 2008 Steve Stern