Managing resource usage and data delivery with virtualization devices is a staple of many of today's data infrastructures. By breaking the traditional direct physical access and inserting an abstraction layer, what one sees is what he/she gets, but the mechanics of delivery may be quite different. The reason for the increase in virtualization deployment is simple: The return on investment (ROI) is significant. For example, load balancers present a simplified interface to the user that usually does not directly reflect the resource. In other words, what may seem like an independent application server to the end user may actually be several dozen servers, each handling a share of the load. The savings involved in not interrupting the business process make the expenditures (capital and administration) for a load balancer solution thoroughly worthwhile. The author introduces network file management (NFM), a load balancing methodology for file access, which is sometimes referred to as file virtualization because it acts as a proxy between client file server requests and the file server resources. NFM is sometimes confused with storage virtualization (used in SANs--storage area networks--to virtualize the storage media itself), although a complete storage methodology may include both file and storage virtualization. As with other virtualization schemes, NFM can provide a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of systems by reducing storage and administration costs of networked data. NFM is a relatively new approach to solving some common issues in information technology management.