The Technical Advantages and Disadvantages of Using a Hypervisor in an Enterprise - Assignment Example

HYPERVISORS Hypervisors Affiliation Examine the technical advantages and disadvantages of using a hypervisor in an enterprise. Basically, the basic purpose of hypervisors is to save resources by allowing the companies to mimic operating systems. This can be done by installing and executing virtual operating systems as a single software in place of different operating systems for individual system interfaces. In this scenario, a variety of operating systems can be installed and executed on the single device without consuming extra system resources. Additionally, instead of copying and maintaining various files and records on a single operating system, the same files which exist on the main operating system can be accessed and used by all operating systems within a hypervisor access. In this scenario, these files can be used by all the operating systems for executing definite programs that can run only on specific operating systems (Spencer, 2013). At the present, there exist a wide variety of hypervisor solutions which can be used by organizations with the purpose of allowing guest users to access an online pool of operating systems for the purpose of communication or testing. In fact, these applications can be used by any industry such as business organization, educational institution, government and industrial sector in order to connect a large number of different users to the specific server by making use of customized user accounts. Moreover, business organizations can also use hypervisors to improve the security of their data and information. In this scenario, they can use hypervisors for malware purposes with the intention that rootkit or spyware software could sense activities that the primary operating system carries out, for instance activities which are performed by anti-virus software, and successfully hide from them (Spencer, 2013). As it is clear from the discussion the major purpose of hypervisor is to save the precious resources of an organization. In view of the fact that hypervisors are installed and executed on industrial and commercial servers as well as they can execute very large numbers of operating systems all together without requiring additional hardware resources. Moreover, a large number of organizations also make use of hypervisors in their virtual networks with the purpose of sharing physical system resources for instance storage media, memory, and computational capability (Spencer, 2013). Though, the use of hypervisors can save lots of hardware resources, but in order to find a reliable hypervisor an organization must have skilled persons, who can decide for the choice. Basically, it is difficult to find a reliable hypervisor software. In addition, the cost can be an issue as these hypervisors are expensive and their maintenances can also require an additional cost. Although there exist a large number of free versions, but the decision for their selection can be difficult. Moreover, the research has shown that hypervisors are not capable of running virtual systems on local computers, on the other hand, other virtualization strategies frequently provide this functionality (Spencer, 2013). 2. Compare and contrast the hypervisors from Microsoft (Hyper-V), VMware (ESXi), and Hitachi’s (Virtage). Hitachi and Red Hat K.K, which are a subsidiary of Red Hat INC were integrated to develop a technology that allows the execution of a number of instances of virtualization software on a PC server with high level consistency and efficiency. Basically, some useful features were added to Virtage’s LPAR (logical partitioning). Virtage is the latest virtualization technology, which allows logical partitioning of server platforms. Using the feature of hardware transparency for logical servers, now it is probable to offer the same guest operating system interface from both logical servers and physical servers. In view of the fact that Virtage is a hypervisor - type virtualization, and as a result, it provides higher performance as compared to host-emulation virtualization services for the reason that using this virtualization guest operating systems can be run directly and simply on the virtualized environment, even it does not require any host interference (Ueno, Hadano, & Hasegawa, 2009; Storage Servers, 2012). Without a doubt, VMware has turned out to be a well-known virtual trend. Basically, this brand name refers to a remarkable group of server, desktop and cloud management tools and technologies which are purposefully developed to help organizations make better use of their computing resources. Hence, it can be acknowledged that VMware is still the market leader, on the other hand Virtage and Hyper V are rapidly developing as a risk to the top (Bradford, 2013). Being hypervisors, all Virtage, VMware and Hyper V are responsible for providing virtualization services to the firms. In fact, they are very similar to each other. However, there can be some prominent differences in the design and architecture of each platform (Bradford, 2013). Basically, most of the VMware products such as ESX and vSphere are known as monolithic hypervisors. In this scenario, in monolithic hypervisors hardware access is maintained for each virtual machine. In addition, it encompasses a number of components such as device drivers for managing all elements that need to be accessed by virtual machines. In this scenario, various drivers can include network, input and storage devices. One of the key benefits of the monolithic design is that this design does not need a host operating system for the reason that the hypervisor performs the duties of the operating platform that is responsible for supporting all the virtual operating systems executing on the hardware. Hence, it provides excellent for the reason that those operating systems act as they are really executing on any physical machine. In this scenario, this design also simplifies the virtual machine administration as it does not require a host operating system for accessing tools that are required to manage these environments (Bradford, 2013). On the other hand, one of the serious challenges with VMware is its capability to deal with the security issues. In fact, it is the critical challenge for VMware to date. In view of the fact that VMware makes use of APIs in its hypervisors products to provide access to the operating platform. Hence, the use of APIs permits malware writers to write and enter nasty code as well as have an effect on all the virtual environments running on the physical machine. Moreover, VMware faced serious consequences when hackers successfully uncovered private code from its ESX hypervisor (Bradford, 2013). As discussed above, the differences between these hypervisors lie in their design and architecture. For instance, Hyper V hypervisor is a microkernelized hypervisor. As compared to VMware hypervisors, this specific hypervisor does not make use of any device drivers at the hypervisor layer. On the other hand, these device drivers exist in the panels of the particular operating systems. In this scenario, these drivers execute autonomously for each, specific virtual setting. Hence, this different and unique design of configuration provides Hyper V an advantage over other hypervisors such as Virtage and VMware. In view of the fact that Microsoft products are developed through a secure software development approach and security always remains one of the key concerns of Microsoft, therefore the presence of security properties can be one of the greatest selling points of Hyper V. It is all because Hyper V does not make use of API access to the hypervisor layer, in this way this design does not allow hackers to make changes to existing code and add their own modifications in order to compromise the working of the product. On the other hand, in order to compromise the security of this product a hacker would need to compromise each virtual machine on an individual level. Unlike other two hypervisors, Hyper V is more efficient in dealing with the issues of stability for the reason that the execution of the device drivers is being performed at the virtual level, so any bug, update or other possible driver-related issues can simply have an effect on those specific virtual machines. Consequently, the stability issues of a single machine do not affect the entire virtual infrastructure (Bradford, 2013). On the other hand, there are various other matters as well, which can discourage the usage of Hyper V, for instance, this hypervisor calls for an operating system to be installed hence the hypervisor is able to offer hardware access to all other guest operating systems. In addition, this kind of configuration can make complete virtual infrastructure weak against interruption. For example, for any reason the host operating system stops working, it will have a serious impact on all those guest operating systems and their virtual machines will go down with the ship (Bradford, 2013). One of the serious concerns that can discourage the usage of Hyper V is the availability. In view of the fact that Microsoft used to maintain security of its products by providing updates. In this scenario, these updates are applied to the host operating system that is also responsible for controlling all the virtual machines. On the other hand, after that installations, these vital security updates can require the system to reboot, in this scenario a firm does not migrate its virtual machines to an alternative node in the cluster, they can undergo downtime while the system reboots. Though, system maintenance is common in huge infrastructures, however the system downtime can be possibly harmful when mission-critical applications are running on the systems (Bradford, 2013). All the hypervisors have their advantages and disadvantages, however the differences lie in their design and architecture. Both Hyper V and Virtage are newly emerging hypervisors however, VMware exists for a long time. It is expected that in the future Microsoft, VMware can take over the market for the reason that the majority of operating systems are developed by Microsoft Corporation and they have started providing most of the virtualization features in their operating systems (Bradford, 2013). 3. Evaluate the effect of hypervisors on the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in an enterprise. The research has shown that the market of hypervisors is complicated not because of the differences and variations between designs and architectures of hypervisors, however, there exists a large number of differences in overall virtual infrastructure management support and service areas. Hence, it becomes difficult for the organizations to identify what it takes to correctly establish a proper working virtualization infrastructure in a reality data center. Without a doubt, these differences and variations between hypervisors are clearly obvious, on the other hand, these hypervisors have considerable impact on both Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA). In this scenario, total cost of ownership is sometimes uncertain as well as complicated land, however, in the context of today’s hard dollars included in total cost of acquisition, there comes a variety of hidden expenditures with the hypervisors that must be understood (The TANEJA Group, Inc., 2009). Basically, an organization cannot initiate a financial plan without understanding the functional and business needs of the hypervisors selection and installation. There are many factors and features that raise the costs of virtual infrastructure. For instance, data types and workload types. In this scenario, there will come a requirement of resource usage. What kind of services have to be used on a hypervisor and it will have a serious impact on the cost. In the same way, the need for high availability, recoverability, security and reliability also increase the costs of virtual infrastructure. It is observed that the finance department always wants to exudate the organizational assets with the purpose of maximizing the return on assets (ROA). In this scenario, the use of older assets for reducing costs can cause serious problems. In addition, before initiating a total cost of ownership or a cost reduction strategy an organization must need to understand factors that can have an impact on the cost of hypervisors. Basically, there are more than 24 types of costs that are associated with the implementation of virtual infrastructure. For instance, these costs can include hardware costs, software costs, license costs, support costs, maintenance costs, monitoring costs, power consumption and cooling costs, security and data protection and so on. In fact, there are more costs associated with human resources who are responsible for maintaining this infrastructure. Hence, before the implementation of a virtual infrastructure, these costs need to be identified and after this analysis an appropriate solution should be selected in order to deal with the needs of an organization (Merrill & Heffernan, 2011). 4. Determine whether the implementation of hypervisors has an impact on system administration. (i.e., would system administrators need re-training?) As the trend of this virtualization strategy is growing with a rapid, a large number of organizations have started to look for techniques and methods which could simplify the load on a hypervisor as well as offer improved efficiency. In addition, software manufacturers have also realized the importance of virtualization and they have started to modify their operating systems in order to make them aware of the virtual machines they are executing on. In the same way, hardware manufacturers started adding additional support and features for a latest kind of privileges. Hence, the modern software applications can make use of one or both of these strategies in order to improve performance. In fact, at the present hypervisors can be found in many products at both enterprise and consumer levels. At the enterprise level, the software application permits underused servers executing various operating systems to be combined. In this scenario, software developers can make use of this approach to execute a variety of instances of alike or even identical operating systems with the purpose of testing compatibility issues (Grimmick, 2013). Normally, there exist a variety of tools that can be used for the management of hypervisor installation and maintenance. However, for an organization a hypervisor involves a huge infrastructure that needs to be managed by a whole team of consisting many experts from different domains and organizational areas. On the other, assigning a complete team to such a project is a resource consuming and costly. The research has shown that simply less than 14% of organizations want to establish and maintain an isolated virtualization management team for more than 24 months. In view of the fact that this huge infrastructure requires managing different resources in which virtual and physical systems work closely to run this infrastructure. Hence, this infrastructure needs to be monitored and controlled in parallel, with the purpose of providing continuous business services. On the other hand, a single team cannot be so expert to deal with all aspects of these varied virtual systems. In fact, this system cannot be managed by a single system administrator of the organization, it will require a large number of experts from different domains to support this complication. The research has shown the majority of organizations do not keep pace with these varying trends. In fact, only less than 14% system administrators are currently making use of tools that are purposefully developed for managing virtual and physical infrastructures. On the other hand, more than 75% of the system administrators make use of traditional approaches and physical tools that are not effective for virtual machines. Though, for small level virtualization a system administrator can make use of these tools to manage this system, however for larger infrastructure, there will need a team of experts to run this infrastructure. In fact, old system administrators will require extensive knowledge and training to successfully operate this environment (Enterprise Management Associates, 2009). References Bradford, C. (2013, May 13). Virtualization Wars: VMware vs. Hyper V: Which is Right For Your Virtual Environment? Retrieved from StorageCraft.com: http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/virtualization-wars-vmware-vs-hyper-v-which-is-right-for-your-virtual-environment/ Enterprise Management Associates. (2009). Beyond the Hypervisor: Optimizing Virtualization Management. Boulder, CO: Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Grimmick, R. (2013, December 31). What Is a Hypervisor? Retrieved from WiseGeek.com: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-hypervisor.htm Merrill, D., & Heffernan, M. (2011). A Framework to Identify, Measure and Reduce the Cost of Virtual Machines. Santa Clara, California: Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Spencer, W. (2013). What is a Hypervisor? Retrieved from Tech-Faq.com: http://www.tech-faq.com/hypervisor.html StorageServers. (2012, September 13). Hitachi offers world’s first Server Virtualization software capable of running on multiple instances. Retrieved from http://storageservers.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/hitachi-offers-worlds-first-server-virtualization-software-capable-of-running-on-multiple-instances/ The TANEJA Group, Inc. (2009). The True Cost of Virtual Server Solutions. Hopkinton, MA: The TANEJA Group, Inc. Ueno, H., Hadano, & Hasegawa, S. (2009). Virtage: Hitachis Virtualization Technology . GPC 09. Workshops at the Grid and Pervasive Computing Conference (pp. 121-127). Geneva: IEEE. Read More