What is virtualization, what are the goals of virtualization and why it becomes a growing popular technology?
Virtualization is the process of creating a software-based, or virtual, representation of something, such as virtual applications, servers, storage and networks. It is the single most effective way to reduce IT expenses while boosting efficiency and agility for all size businesses. Today, we can virtualized all from applications to the servers, and because of that this technology is developing more and more.
The largest use of virtualization is in data centers because the number of computers is reduced and the reliability and availability of the server is maintained. The main reasons for virtualization are reducing costs for maintaining infrastructure, increasing server utilization, and simplifying server management. Virtualization as a technology has the ability to change the basic concepts of computing and the way it works on a computer.
Based on the vMWare website he support three type of virtualization:
Server Virtualization
Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical server as highly efficient virtual machines. Key benefits include:
- Greater IT efficiencies
- Reduced operating costs
- Faster workload deployment
- Increased application performance
- Higher server availability
- Eliminated server sprawl and complexity
Network Virtualization
By completely reproducing a physical network, network virtualization allows applications to run on a virtual network as if they were running on a physical network — but with greater operational benefits and all the hardware independencies of virtualization. (Network virtualization presents logical networking devices and services — logical ports, switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, VPNs and more — to connected workloads.)
Desktop Virtualization
Deploying desktops as a managed service enables IT organizations to respond faster to changing workplace needs and emerging opportunities. Virtualized desktops and applications can also be quickly and easily delivered to branch offices, outsourced and offshore employees, and mobile workers using iPad and Android tablets.
The important part of virtualization is hypervision. A hypervisor is a program that would enable you to host several different virtual machines on a single hardware. Each one of these virtual machines or operating systems you have will be able to run its own programs, as it will appear that the system has the host hardware’s processor, memory and resources. In reality, however, it is actually the hypervisor that is allocating those resources to the virtual machines.
There are two types of hypervisors:
- Type 1 hypervisor: hypervisors run directly on the system hardware – A “bare metal” embedded hypervisor ( ESX and ESXi, Micorsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, …)
- Type 2 hypervisor: hypervisors run on a host operating system that provides virtualization services, such as I/O device support and memory management ( VMware Workstation ,VMware Player, Oracle VirtualBox, …)
However, virtualization can help small businesses to get more with less equipment, and make backup and recovery more reliable.
Virtualizing your server lets you run different operating systems, such as Windows and Linux, in different virtual servers on the same physical server.
Once you have one virtual server configured, you can clone that configuration to setup new virtual servers. Compare that to the old instalation method and you will see how efficient server virtualization can be.
You can take snapshots of your server as often as you want. Then, you can use any one of those snapshots to return your server to a particular configuration from a particular point in time. This is the best and fastest backup method.
There’s more benefit for small and medium businesses with virtual desktops than server-based technologies. In a 10- to 20-user network, you”re going to have only a couple of servers but 20 to 30 desktops. What’s more expensive? Obviously the desktops, and it takes more resources to maintain them. The average cost for just one desktop is $1,100 plus licenses,”
Marcus L. Wilson, president and CEO of intelligIS
So, when you want to install a new program, you install it just once on the server. All of your users then access the application through their thin clients. This is a huge time and money saver over installing new software on many individual PCs.
