The Virtualized Future
[Posted by titris @ 7:07 pm ]
Full virtualization, in computer science, is a virtualization technique used to implement a certain kind of virtual machine environment: one that provides a complete simulation of the underlying hardware. The result is a system in which all software capable of execution on the raw hardware can be run in the virtual machine. In particular, this includes all operating systems. - Wikipedia
Virtualization is the without a doubt not only going to be the future of the server and data-center world, but the end-user, in home computing solution as well.
First a little history and explanation.
The concept of virtualization is nothing new, first introduced by IBM in the late ‘60s, and allows a physical host system to have multiple operating systems loaded simultaneously. The multiple instances are monitored and managed through remotely connecting to the underlying operating system that is physically loaded on to the actual server itself. Through the management console you can create your virtual hosts and allocate resources as you see fit, from the number of virtual processors, amount of system memory and hard drive space, to networking and virtual optical drives.
So, what does this all mean and why is it the future?
Virtualization is a relatively simple process and its EXTREMELY cost effective. The reasoning behind that statement is with the conversion software that is available it is easy to P2V (that’s the term for the Physical to Virtual conversion process) any existing computers and load them on to a virtual host. After which all you need is a terminal or rdp session to connect to the virtual machine of your choice and away you go.
The biggest benefit is definitely with data-centers because it allows for server consolidation as well as full hardware utilization. Most servers one would go out and purchase today have amazing specifications even at the midrange level. Typically two quad-core processors, 16 or 32 gigs of memory, and six or so 128 gig sas drives. This is undoubtably overkill for running something simple such as a file server or print server alone. Loading multiple roles on the same machine opens up many vulnerabilities and as a result is frowned upon for security reasons. So should you buy low end hardware that is susceptible to failure? No and this is why virtualization is so great. It allows the administrator to allocate separate data-stores for each installation, and the amount of memory each will utilize for its function. So that this one single server can have 10 or so virtual machines on it and you can actually use it to its full potential.
Now you might be thinking well what if that one server takes a crap? While many servers now have extreme redundancy, with everything from dual power supplies, dual nics, raid arrays with hot-swap drives, and even hot-swappable ram and processors on some models, it’s still a legitimate concern. If that one physical box goes down you just lost the equivalent of ten machines. The solution to this until recently has been to setup another identical server that replicates data and sits by as a failover unit just in case. However this solution still wastes valuable hardware.
With some of the new products coming from one of the industry leaders in virtualization VMWare is taking it to an entirely new playing field. They recently released VSphere 4 which is their server level o/s that they describe as a new technology of cloud computing. It has the capability of pooling the resources of all of your physical machines and then you carve your virtuals out of this large group. This overcomes the fear and worries of losing a physical box because your virtuals reside in the “cloud” and can move from box to box with absolutely no effect on the end user. The end user can have anything from a print job going to the virtual server whose physical box just died or be in the middle of a database query and it would instantly reallocate another boxes’ resources to that virtual and the user wouldn’t even see a stutter in performance.
Quite a few home users are already using virtual technology, especially the Macintosh community. With Microsoft still having a firm hold on the computing world some software companies just simply don’t offer their product with a Mac compatible version. Because of this applications such as VMWare’s Fusion allows users to run a Windows installation through a virtual machine on their computer which in turn allows them to run any Windows only programs.
