Frequency Asked Questions About Virtual Servers

What is a virtual or cloud server?
How does virtualization work?
What operating system can be used on a virtual server?
How easy is it to move a phsical server in to a virtual server?
Does my virtual server have high availability?
Will I have console access on a virtual server?

How easy is it move a physical server in to a virtual server

Using our virtual server migration tool we can help you migrate a running server in to our virtual cloud with a few clicks of a mouse. This allows you to easily move your server in to our virtual enviornment without having re-install operating system or software.

Does my virtual server have high availability

All virtual servers hosted by Data Matters will have high availability at the machine level. This means that if there is ever a failure on any of our physical servers that host your virtual machine your server will continue to run without impact. If you require software high availability you will need to utilizing some type of heart beat of cluster software.

Will I have console access to my virtual server

Using our web portal all administrators will have access to a virtual console as well as the ability to power off, power on or reboot your virtual server. Our web portal is designed to ensure you have the same ability on your virtual machine as you would on a physical server.

What is a virtual or Cloud Server?

A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operating systems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own CPU, RAM hard disk and network interface card (NIC). An operating system can't tell the difference between a virtual machine and a physical machine, nor can applications or other computers on a network. Even the virtual machine thinks it is a physical computer.

How does virtualization work?

Virtualization works by allowing multiple operating systems to have access to the hardware in a single physical server. The operating systems are isolated and completed independant of each other and are typically referred to as "guest" or "virtual machines". A piece of software known as the Hypervisor is used to manage the physical resources of the server ensuring that resources are available to the virtual server when needed. Data Matters' Virtual servers are powered by VMware vSphere the leader in Hypervisor software.

What operating system can be instealled on a virtual server?

Our virtual server platform supports all magor operating systems including by not limited to the following:

All Microsoft Windows desktop enviornments (95 to 7)
All Microsoft windows Server enviornments (NT4 to 2008 R2)
CentOS / Redhat Enterprise Linux
SuSE, Ubuntu, Debia Linux
Any other Linux 2.6 Kernel OS
32bit or 64bit support for any supported operating system