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Businesses using a virtualized infrastructure have many reasons to move active virtual machines (VMs) from one physical server to another. Whether the migrations are for routine maintenance, balancing performance needs, work distribution (consolidating VMs onto fewer servers during non-peak hours to conserve resources), or another reason, the best virtual infrastructure platform executes the move as quickly as possible and with minimal impact to end users.

Principled Technologies tested VMware vSphere 5 vMotion against Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V Live Migration. According to Principled Technologies, VMware was faster, had greater stability and less impact on application performance.

Data centers consume massive amounts of electricity. A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency states that data centers in the U.S. consume 4.5 billion kWh annually, or 1.5 percent of the country's total electrical consumption.

But virtualization can have a significant impact.