Virtualization is not a hard concept. Virtualization is a layer, technically hypervisor,which decouples the physical hardware from operating system for greater resource utilization. Virtualization technology allows multiple operating systems (virtual machines) to run side by side on one physical machine. By virtualizing the infrastructure organizations can reap substantial benefits.
Virtualization Explained:
In traditional approach each server is associated with a dedicated physical machine and its resource utilization will be 10% whereas in cloud virtualized datacenters each server can be virtualized and can be set up on a single physical machine. Virtualization technology increases the CPU utilization to 90%.
Benifits of virtualization:
- Using virtualization you can reduce the number of physical servers and you can cut maintenance and ongoin operational costs.
- Provides capacity on demand
- Better disaster recovery options when compared to traditional data centers.
- Using virtualization you can deploy servers which will be up and running in minutes.
- Live migration.
Datacenter Virtualization:
The primary requirements for datacenter virtualization are virtual servers,storage,networking and unmodified operating systems.These servers share the same pool of resources by running the application independently Organizations are always in need of higher level of utilization and flexibility of hardware resources. Virtual servers achieve this by abstracting the memory, processor, storage, network etc.Virtual servers on other hand , delivers flexible and scalable cloud enviroments.
Public cloud providers like Amazon AWS use virtualization as a backbone for their cloud environment.It is a very simple provisioning method to allocate the virtual servers with the easy-to-use interface and templates to deploy the virtual server.
High Availability:
Virtualized datacenter provides high availability and failover options to protect applications. Incase of failover ,workloads will be transferred to another availability zone. It provides zero downtime to meet service level agreements.
Live Migration:
live migration is the process of moving the virtual machines from one physical machine to another. This process takes place without disrupting the users connection. Live migration helps in server maintenance with out any service interruption.
Top virtualization providers:
- VMware
- Citrix
- Oracle
- Microsoft
- Amazon
- Redhat
- Virtual Bridges
- Proxmox
- parallels