Computer Systems - Exam Revision

Computer Systems - Exam Revision

1. Real, physical servers are now so powerful that they spend much of their time doing nothing. For example they get a request for a file or data and within nanoseconds the job is done then they wait for the next request. This low load is very inefficient. It wastes energy and money. The alternative is a virtual server. The virtual server is an image of a complete server that runs as a software program on the physical server. Many virtual servers can run on one physical machine, so the loading is much higher. Many data centres now operate with virtual servers. Business centres of the data centre also benefit because they can rent as many or as few virtual servers as they need at that point in time. They just pay for the actual data used