The key benefits of deploying iFolder as a virtual service are as follows:
With iFolder configured on a virtual server either in single-server mode or multi-server mode, the capability and capacity of the iFolder server remains the same. Using Xen or any other virtualized environment, each virtual host can be used as an iFolder server consuming a common storage, yet providing load balancing between the hosts. If each host can afford a dedicated network resource, the performance of the host increases because iFolder is dependent on wired communication for most of its operations.
A virtualized environment helps in reducing the number of physical resources and helps improve management. When the iFolder servers are deployed in a virtual environment, you can handle multiple Web Administration consoles with ease and with lower maintenance overhead. Users transparently get the performance and scalability expected from the physical servers.
iFolder deployment in a virtual environment ensures that multiple services run on a single physical resource with a dedicated virtual guest server for each service. Given this, an iFolder multi-server setup can run on a single physical server with multiple virtual hosts. The entire multi-server setup can run on a single physical resource. This reduces cost and time to deploy.
If each virtual guest is treated as a single server, see Section 2.0, Single-Server Deployment. If a multi-server setup is used for the virtual guests, see Section 3.0, Multi-Server (Master-Slave) Deployment and Section 4.0, Multi-Server (Master-Master) Deployment. If a cluster is set up on the virtual guest, see Section 6.0, Single-Server Cluster Deployment.