Virtualization tools (such as VMware and Hyper-V) can be used to replicate existing physical applications and datasets into a virtual environment. In fact, a single Virtual Machine (VM) can replicate the functionality of an entire computer system. When a VM is created, it is provisioned with memory, compute, and storage requirements that match a precise application or dataset need. As an example: let’s assume that your company uses a particular SQL Server database. Using a Virtualization tool, you create and provision the new VM. It contains enough storage to handle the size of the dataset, and uses enough compute and memory power to ensure high availability. Once created, this new virtualized SQL Server dataset lives separately within your computer.