Virtualization Vital in Efficiency in educational Institutions

In the past few decades’ technology has evolved at a staggering rate. It has been almost inevitable that schools and institutes would take upon this advantage to help students learn and excel in their studies. As a result more and more computers have been inserted in classrooms as well as starting IT courses in schools requiring more and more computers. Since this has been so successful students are able to have their own logins and have been able to save their personal study information on the computers. 

Limkokwing has been able to adopt this technique very effectively and even has the ability to be able to allow students to run software on standalone machines in order to learn and further their education.

This is a very positive thing not only for Limkokwing students but it has proven very effective in many institutions and especially in developing countries who are still new to this major advancement in technology and availability of IT resources. But what implications does this impose on Limkokwing. How is this affecting the energy consumption and costs?

How can this be further improved?

Ownership costs, energy consumption, hardware refresh costs and software licensing are major problems that Universities and upcoming institution are facing.  Technology is changing drastically and applications and users are in more demand for better-equipped workstations in order to produce better quality work, especially in a Creativity University like Limkokwing. As a result these workstation will be replaced allowing newer ones to be bought incurring extra cost s on the university. Now the older ones are obsolete and as a result need to be disposed of resulting in waste and pollution, as some materials are not recyclable. Another factor is the amount of energy that is consumed by many workstations. Many workstations consume almost 409W of power when running at 100% and 202W even at rest. This is a big concern when it comes to the electricity bills universities pay. Now that many students are taking on IT degrees as well as degrees in design the number of powerful computers increases as well as a demand for licensed software there are a lot of cost that once again will be incurred on the institute.

Now we have identified the issues that our schools and universities are facing. What is the solution?

Virtualization the process that, the physical characteristics of computing resources are hidden from the way in which users and applications interact with hardware.

Virtualization is very similar to sending a message from your mobile device to shop for products at a low price or a request from a user for directions using GPS. Virtualization can be a very general subject but when applied can be very useful especially in education for use in networks, servers and applications.

Now that we have established the meaning of virtualization how can this be applied to our educational institute?

The first example of this application is in desktop virtualization. This is the process, which the student’s operating system and his desktop application will be hosted on a virtual computer running on a server. IT gives the students a lot of freedom and ability to have their own custom accounts and still be able to use it on different computers within the school.

With this the first biggest advantage is that the cost of software licenses if a workstation were to fail would be cut down, as all applications and software will be run of the server.

The other alternative is server virtualization. What happens is that a single server is partitioned into smaller secure servers that run different applications. Like this the physical hardware needs is cut down as well as the management costs.

Now because of increased usage it is easier to change hardware, so moving a virtual server is as easy as copying a file to the next server.

This for an educational institute such as Limkokwing will be very beneficial as there is reduced power consumption, lower operating costs and greater overall reliability as the replication of the servers is easy and making backups and damage control is very easy.

Because of how beneficial this is Limkokwing should look into a virtual schooling option for the students. IT is very similar to that of K-12 schools in the United States. Research shows that The server virtualization in the K-12 schools ‘gives district IT departments the tools to deliver secure, supportable application severs without software interaction problems.’ Now because of this ‘The lower support costs and higher hardware utilization rates made possible by virtualization enable districts to support more instructional applications at a lower cost.’

Now for Limkokwing purchasing new hardware wont be necessary on a regular basis as older computers or even workstation that use less power can be used to run application that will be run on stronger more powerful servers. With workstations that use less power around 160W a university like Limkokwing will be using around 32000W of power. But now Limkokwing can start using PC’s or thin hardware clients that are using 20W of power totaling 4000W meaning there will be almost a cut of 28000W, which is a huge power consumption cut.

If that is coupled with a server what consumes 4000W its will only reach a total power consumption of 8000W. 

Clearly it can be seen that virtualization is a thing of the future and with the rapid change in hardware more powerful servers can be used with thin hardware clients that consume even less power. If Limkokwing would love to take it into consideration actually have some courses running online and turn to having a sub division of online schooling reducing costs of materials such as paper and facilities so we can accommodate more students. Like this staff and management can give better services to the students with much lower costs with greater security and reliability.