The Development and Achievements of the Virtualized Servers - Research Paper Example

Task: The Development and Achievements of the Virtualized Servers Introduction Virtualized technology is a superb development that has restructured the operations of organizations. The technology lays at the intersection of conservationism and economies an aspect that has promoted its adoption. IT firms are utilizing benefits of virtualization to establish infrastructure, minimize cooling and supervision cost and provide easier and efficient solutions for high accessibility, data management and disaster recovery. The virtualization technology is effective in managing each of these activities; however, the efficiency of the model is limited by the challenges of scalability, security and high costs of maintaining the technology. This paper examines the development of the virtualized technology and its benefits to the organizations. The establishment of the Virtualization Technology Virtualization was initially established in the early 1960s to partition huge mainframe into small manageable virtue machines. With such partitions, the mainframe was capable of multitasking. The first developmental phase emphasized data center management and green objectives. This mainly targeted reducing data center space and minimizing the energy consumed by the system. Additionally, manufactures accessed strategies that would promote operation efficiencies by curtailing the proliferation of servers and reducing the total IT operation cost (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 51). The 2nd phase considered promoting management and consistency of desktop applications. Developments in this stage targeted establishing thin client model, a common management, provision layer and a steadfast application server based on a managed data center. Virtualization technology was shunned in the period of 1980s to 1990s due to the effect of the client-server applications, the x86-servers and desktops which promoted distribution of computation. Importantly, the outspread utilization of the Windows and development of Linux OS in the 1990s built x86 servers as the standard products in the industry (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 39). Future establishment of the x86-server and utilization of desktops new IT infrastructure and functional challenges. These challenges have countered development of the virtualization technology and minimized it adoption. Challenges that have checked establishment of the virtualization technology An apparent challenge that has undermined development and adoption of the technology is the deployment of low infrastructure. Most organizations use one application per server to reduce the vulnerability of their system to attacks arriving from other applications. Additionally, the technology faces a challenge of high physical infrastructure costs. Infrastructure maintenance cost remains high since computing systems must remain operational throughout and this leads to power consumption, and increased cooling costs (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 23). Importantly, there is a challenge of increased IT maintenance, which emanates from the advancement of the computing environment. Management of advanced virtualization technology demands specialized and experienced personnel. This escalates the system management cost since acquiring and maintaining such a group is costly. Furthermore, managing enterprise desktops is challenging since the system requires numerous patches and frequent upgrades (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 185). Lastly, the technology faces serious challenges of security and scalability. There are insufficient disaster protection systems hence firms are vulnerable to systems breakdown and server applications inaccessibility. Additionally, the risk of security attacks, health pandemics, natural disasters and terrorism continues to counteract the growth of the technology. Importantly, flexibilities in the industry have introduced the problem of scalability. The IT industry is highly flexible hence demands a flexible technology. Developing and restructuring the Virtual infrastructures to accommodate novel developments is challenging. Indeed, scalability difficulties have led to abandonment of rigid systems. Developmental efforts aimed at improving efficiency of the technology As identified, prime challenges undermining the growth of virtualization technology is high costs of developing and maintaining the system, low data handling infrastructures, security threats and scalability problems. Consequently, developmental strategies have primarily targeted these challenges and developers have staged competitions by modifying their servers to manage these problems effectively. Initially, recent enhancements in most virtualization systems focus on providing fast and scalable I/O bandwidth for the model. This is instrumental since such technologies can enable the IT organizations enhance consolidation ratios, manage a wider variety application and organize workload more efficiently. Furthermore, such systems would provide an essential prerequisite for the future generation of cloud computing system that would eventually deliver a primary leap in data center competence through improved automation and flexible management of hardware and software systems (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 67). Developers have established fully optimizing I/O virtualized systems, which provide scalable high performance that enables a single I/O model to provide DMA for multiple VMs. Developers are actively participating in joint developments to deliver comprehensive systems capable of accommodating diverse hardware. Additionally, manufactures have strengthened server’s Virtual Functions (VF) to provide effective structure for data movement that is associated with a reduced set of configuration resources (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 145). For instance, systems that interface directly with the VF to transfer data without VMM intervention are accessible. This structure provides each channel with independent memory space, a work route, interrupts and command analysis. Such a structure has potential of executing actions at a fast rate hence have enhanced the performance of the virtualization systems. As a means of addressing the challenges of accessibility, flexibility and scalabilities, developers have designed Application Virtualization (AV) devices that can work comfortably with various systems. Applications such as VMware, Trigence and Softricity provide separate applications and configurations that are independent on host OS; thus, enabling them to run in remote sandboxes that lack installation and memory of the full system virtualization (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 84). Machine Virtualization (MV) demanded code emulations to operate; however, AV operates without translation; hence; CPU based commands run without altering the configuration of the system. Indeed, such applications operate through the windows by intercepting file-system and configuration requests to send data to isolated sandbox. These developments have considerably promoted the performance of the virtualization technology (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 43). Achievements of the application of VT in organizations The Technology has been very successful and has promoted operations in various ways. Initially, virtualization has enhanced server utilization by ensuring maximum exploitation of the available computing structures. Virtualization enables systems to manage complex applications since it allows multitasking. Additionally, the virtualization technology has helped organizations minimize the operation cost (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 61). Virtualization enables an organization to use fewer servers to execute complex actions. Consequently, firms are able to save funds that could be lost in managing IT infrastructures. Virtualization systems are also effective in conserving energy. Servers and computers produce a large amount of heat and are vulnerable to breakdowns if the system lacks frequent cooling. Energy is ever limited and the energy utility cost bill continues to increase. Therefore, a system that reduces energy is very beneficial and has potential of developing an organization’s sustainability. Virtualization conserves energy since the model minimizes the number of computers in the system (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 48). Furthermore, virtualization has promoted data protection and increased flexibility of the IT systems. Virtualizations enable an organization to reproduce and archive data; hence, providing effective data recovery structures. Importantly, virtualization provides cheaper backup systems to small and medium size organizations that outweigh popular backup plans such as the Storage Area Network (SAN) or discs (Buytaert, Rogier & Juan 70). Automation of computing procedures over multiple sources eliminates downtime in the process hence enhancing flexibilities. Moreover, distribution of tasks enhances efficiencies since in case of failure of a channel; a different route is capable of picking up the slack. Indeed, the structure allows specialization hence promoting efficiencies. Conclusion Virtualized technology has experienced considerable developments that have improved its efficiency. However, factors such as low deployment infrastructures, costly physical infrastructure, scalability difficulties and security threats have undermined the performance of the system. Developers have engaged effective approaches aimed at addressing the effect of these challenges. However, there exists no comprehensive plan of addressing these problems hence they continue to hinder the adoption of the technology. Therefore, future developmental strategies that seek to promote efficiency of virtualization technology should focus on managing these challenges. Importantly, the system has imperative attributes that can enhance operations when incorporated in organization’s activities. Work Cited Buytaert, Kris. Rogier, Dittner. and Juan R. Garcia. The Best Damn Server Virtualization Book Period. Burlington, Mass: Syngress, 2007. Print Read More