A fully dedicated server has got a lot of resources that it can be shared amoung so many sites. But certain clients do not wish to let their sites bein a shared environment where others can overload, and that overload can affect your site, and your downtime could nto be compensated easily by anything.

But at the same time, they might find a dedicated server for a few sites that they have to be quite expensive, and that they might not need so much of resources. What do they do? They go to virtual servers.

You buy a server, and a Virtuozzo or a Xen license, install it on your OS, and you have your virtual serers on a dedicated server ready You can have as many virtual servers as your operating system permits. In linux, it is virtually unlimited, and you can create as many virutal enviromnets as you like, but a windows server has got its limitations. It also, does depend on your license.

You could go for openvz for linux, the open source server virtualization software, and since it doesnt come with any licnese fee, it would cost you a lot less, though that gain would vanish away when you employ specialists in that line of server administration.

You can set the Processor, Memory and hard drive resources, and unlike in a shared environment, you will have these resources always on the standby for you, and no one else would be using it, even if its being unused. So, virtually, except for its physical configurations, it is a dedicated server.

Various applications of server virtualization will follow this article soon.