Virtualization across the Board - Assignment Example

Virtualization Hardware virtualization Hardware virtualization entails that various applications run on virtualised hardware and not physical hardware. The market today is making companies re-assess their IT strategies so as to reduce their budget. At the same time, it is essential that both performance of the systems and availability of the systems is maintained or far much improved. Virtualization has been seen to improve the overall performance of various companies without having an impact on uptime or the performance of the IT systems. According to a study done by sagelogix (2011), comprehensive performance metrics was done on an environment that had 38 physical servers, and x-servers that were providing a variety of services like running an oracle database. On analysis, it was realized that some servers were used constantly while others were idle for some large amounts of time. This research has therefore been able to highlight some hardware was inefficiently used, and thus proved some worthy points on the advantages of using hardware virtualisation as discussed below. On cost management, the study proved that cost savings could be increased by using some of the virtualization products offered by Oracle. In this case, the number of physical servers could be reduced from 38 to 10 (sagelogix, 2011). This reduction in physical servers would therefore ensure that management of the systems would be easier. Cost would be taken into consideration as the reduction of the physical servers would ensure that the data centre would reduce in size by 78%. This would additionally save on costs through reduced electricity bills, space bills and requirements for cooling. Managing of the system would be simplified by the above factors. Cost of licensing all the servers would also be greatly reduced (sagelogix, 2011). It is thus wise that hardware virtualization is a real business asset. The system architecture which then becomes homogenously interconnected would greatly improve the scalability of the system. This would be due to the fact that it would be simpler to load applications through the Oracle Virtual machine, which is highly available, at no additional costs in terms of hardware and software. A uniform architecture and a uniform operating system would easily improve the management of the system (sagelogix, 2011). Software virtualization Software virtualization is double edged. It has brought quite some changes in the way businesses run their trade and improved their services, and at the same time has had an impact on the way vendors licence their wares. According to Greenward (2010), this difference has brought in a gap that can be very costly. The aspect of virtualization has brought in far many advantages but has left upon the software licensing companies to work on their strategies. In cost saving options, software virtualization has brought in increased utilization of servers from 20% to 60% and a 10:1 ratio of server consolidation (Greenward, 2010). This is an aspect that reduces software purchasing costs with such figures. Greenward (2010) shows that machine performance greatly increases through software virtualization through more flexible modes of configuration of resources that lead to some varying to computation needs across various platforms. On management, use of resources like “Unified Compliance Framework (UCF)” many organizations using software virtualization to provide very effective frameworks for governance as well as compliance. Software virtualization also offers scalability through proper management of scalability swings like high loads of applications usage that leads to quite noteworthy management of the required activities. VMware vs. Microsoft vs. Citrix This section compares the three great beaters in virtualization industry in terms of marketing adoption techniques, the available technical architecture and the technical support offered by the companies. Marketing adoption: According to the current market base, VMware is so far the leader as it has a wide range of companies that support it, and provide a wide range of add-on software. This has actually led to Microsoft and Citrix opting to cooperate and make more of the available features to hit the market (FindTheBest, 2013). Technical Support: in terms of technical support, only Microsoft offers 24 hour support. On the other hand, VMware offers a variety of other features that are neither offered by Citrix or Microsoft. Such features include Mailing lists, onsite support, online webinars and the other standard technical support features that are offered by the other two companies like email, blogs, help desk, forums, manuals, phone service, system upgrades and much more. Citrix has an upper hand in offering instructional videos unlike the two other companies. Microsoft’s technical support has recorded demos and request forms that are not offered by the other two (FindTheBest, 2013). Technical architecture: This is an area that offers a stiff competition with the undisputed leader is terms of system specifications being VMware. VMware leads in a wide variety of guest operating systems software whilst Citrix leads in a wide variety of supported host OS. Considering the number of host server limits supported, VMware leads in all the areas having the mighest number of VMs (512), 160 logical CPUs per host, 25 virtual CPUs per core and 2048 virtual disks per host. All the other players lag behind in this performance (FindTheBest, 2013). VMware has the highest number of virtual CPUs per VM with Citrix at 16 and Microsoft at 4. The limits of RAM are 1000GB for VMware with the rest lagging behind. Management features for virtualization are high with VMware as it supports, unlike the others, report change, live migration, P2V conversion, performance metrics, performance reports and power management. The other required features like real time alerts are available as in the other systems. VMware supports all the three main types of virtualization (hardware assisted virtualization, paravirtualization and full virtualization). The other two players offer two at a time with Microsoft lacking paravirtualization and Citrix lacking full virtualization. Like Citrix, VMware supports both x86 and x64 architecture with Microsoft only supporting x64 (FindTheBest, 2013). Conclusion Based on the discussed issues in this report, it is basically evident the greatest company in terms the basic virtualization requirements is VMware. Microsoft and Citrix have some miles to cover before they get to the level of this company. References FindTheBest. (2013). VMware vs Citrix vs Microsoft Virtualization Software/Hypervisors. Retrieved from http://virtualization.findthebest.com/saved_compare/VMware-vs- Citrix-vs-Microsoft-Virtualization-Software-Hypervisors Greenwald, E. (2013). The Business Impact of Virtualization on Software Licensing. Retrieved from http://vmblog.com/archive/2010/07/23/the-business-impact-of- virtualization-on-software-licensing.aspx Sagelogix. (2013). Impacts of virtualization on Today’s Business. Retrieved from http://www.sagelogix.com/idc/groups/public/documents/sagelogix- casestudy/sage017188.pdf Read More