3 Tips for Safe and Effective Virtualization

摘要

Platform virtualization has come of age in process control. The benefits are overwhelming, particularly for systems that include more than a dozen PCs. You've no doubt seen a lot of information about these benefits, including easier system management, longer computer hardware life, and the need for fewer PCs to buy and maintain. There are also pitfalls you might not know about, and it's important to be aware of those to protect your systems as you adopt virtualization. Here are a few ideas that will make your projects more successful: Copy like a pro. Copying a virtual machine (VM) is easy. After all, it's just a collection of files on a hard drive. You can create a library of computer nodes and duplicate as needed to build new systems or expand existing ones. But think first. If a virtual node has been connected to a network or exposed to files from USB drives, it could contain malware. Copy that node, and you also copy the risk.