Virtualization and Virtual Machines - Coursework Example

Running head: VIRTUALIZATION AND VIRTUAL MACHINES Virtualization and virtual machines Name Institution Tutors name Grade course Date Abstract This article is going to discuss the concept of virtualization its history and the problems that this technology solves in the society. Furthermore, it is going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of virtualization, impacts of virtualization in real life situations, other competitive technologies, latest features of virtualization and its cost. Introduction Virtualization is one of the technologies that are applied in the field of information technology. Sharing of network resources such as bandwidth has been possible with the advent of this technology. The efficiency of information processing, storage and delivery to the targeted clients has also improved tremendously. The cost of using this technology still remains a challenge for most organizations in the corporate world. History of virtualization The concept of virtualization was developed for the first time by IBM in the early 1960s in order to fully utilize the mainframe hardware by partitioning them logically into virtual machines. These partitions created in the mainframe computers will enable them to perform multiple tasks and applications at the same time. In 1960s, mainframe computers was expensive, this prompt IBM to look for a way to fully utilize its resources. Between 1980s and 1990s, desktop computing and x86 servers was made, as a result of this, virtualization technology was discarded finally. Client-server applications and emergence of operating systems such as Linux and Windows change server computing to be inexpensive. Emergence of this new technology came up with new challenges like high maintenance and management cost of machines, high cost of infrastructure, and insufficient failure and disaster protection that push for the invention of virtualization for x 86 platforms (Harrisdy, 2005). Virtualization of x86 significantly improves efficiency and bring down the overall cost of information technology services. In 1990, VMWare were invented virtualization for x86 architecture to solve the new problems that later emerged. In mid 1999, VMWare introduced virtualization solution that changes x 86 systems into a complete isolated shared hardware infrastructure. The virtualization technology gives a chance of running several operating systems in one computer that includes Windows, Linux, and others. The numbers of virtual machines that can be run in one computer rely on the specification of the hardware. Give that virtualization software is run by OS like a common application; this will give a chance to speedily replace a virtual machine hence raising the availability of services throughout the data center. VMWare also gives a player that will give a chance to running a virtual machine on any computer without necessarily installing new software. This has made VMWare a leader in virtualization. Because of potential revenue generation from virtualization, Microsoft Company speedily took acquisition of a virtual server software company Connectix to share the large market with VMWare. Microsoft produced a Windows hosted virtualization program known as Microsoft virtual PC 2004 in mid 2006 as a product that was not sold (Dale, 2009). After the release, another one known as virtual PC 2007 beta followed towards the end of 2006. The latest version that was named Windows virtual PC was released together with Windows 7 operating system. The virtual machines are now applied in many datacenters to work like a normal server but with significant low maintenance and management cost. The virtual technology has a huge potential and will carry out a very significant role in the future of computing. What is virtualization? Virtualization is the creation of virtual version of a certain device or resource like a server, storage device, network or OS where the framework divides the resource to more than one for execution environments. For example, even partitioning of hard disk into two or more partitions is virtualization since you take one drive and divide to create two different hard drives. Devices, human users, and applications can interact freely together with the virtual device as if it was a one logical device. OS virtualization is the application of a certain type of software to permit a piece of hardware to run several OS images concurrently. Virtualization software was quickly adopted in 2005 by ever body including the experts. There are 3 areas of information technology where virtualization is mainly applied, this are; network visualization, this is a method of bringing together the available resources in a network by dividing the given bandwidth into several channels. Every channel does not depend on another and can be assigned a particular server or device in real time and vice versa. The idea is that virtualization can divide the network into several parts that can be easily managed; storage virtualization is bring together different physical storage from different network storage devices into what will look like one storage device that can be easily managed from central console. This technology is normally applied in storage area networks (SAN); server virtualization is the masking of server resources from server users (Bernard, 2007). The reason for this is to assist the user from having to learn and manage complicated details of server resources at the same time raising the resource sharing and utilization and keeping the capacity in order to expand later. Virtualization is seen as part of an overall trend in enterprise information technology which includes autonomic computing, a situation in which the information technology environment is capable of managing itself depending on the perceived activity and utility computing where computer processing power is viewed as a utility that the users can pay for when needed. The real goal of virtualization is to bring together administrative work at the same time improving scalability and work loads. What problems does virtualization solve? The virtual machines were developed to solve the past problems of typical third generations’ architects and multi-programming operating systems like OS/360. Those architects had dual-state hardware organization, a privileged and non-privileged mode. Virtualization allows for the reduction of hardware to be managed or in other words, it solves the problem of replication, this will reduce expenses and save time. In an organization if you do not have enough staff, virtualization can solved this problem because bringing together several hard wares and soft wares together will require few staff to work on. Virtual machines have the capability of running legacy applications. Legacy application sometimes cannot run in new hard wares or OSs. If it manages to run, it may underutilize the server; this will require consolidation of several applications. This will be solved by virtualization. Virtualization in an organization reduces the outlays that occur with hardware and power; it also improves the availability and decrease the amount of disaster recovery. The use of storage area network (SAN) allows virtual machines to share several storage resources that are of standard, while at the same time virtualization allows several servers to share the same host. Virtualization solves the problem of application containment in OS that does not have LSSP functions and when several independent super users are required. The new software released by the composite software known as composite information server data virtualization platform has faster algorithm features that automate the business-critical steps of finding and understanding source data, this will speed up the data modeling step of data visualization (Bernard, 2007). This software also has some features like relationship-discovery tool, this will solve the problem of data models since it easily calculates the models data; integration with composite information server, this will solve the problem of intelligent queries; the latest adapter that permits SQL developers to easily access Oracle Essbase source data; and latest GUI management console. Pros, Cons and limitations of virtualization Virtualization isolates applications from one another in its own sandbox environment. Virtual computers can run on the same physical machine, this is done through simplifying information technology hardware. In the running, the machines will appear as if they are independent from the software being run. The virtual machines are made in a way that they are independent, incase one machine goes down, the others will continue running making the business to continue (Wellie, 2006). Virtualization increases utilization and promote consolidation; when the servers are consolidated, it will result in an easier management and reduce hardware costs. Virtual architecture requires limited physical machines hence resulting in few physical computers. This is advantages because creating and maintaining physical machines are time consuming and dirty. The machines allows for scenario testing easily. The current machines softwares provides snapshot and rollback capabilities. It also facilitates scenario testing by allowing virtual networks. The virtual machine can be easily moved from one physical machine to another. The current virtual machines softwares are stored in a disk as a single file. The setback of consolidation is that it will raise the susceptibility to hardware failures and also raise the impact from those failures. The concentration of machines in one place is like putting all the eggs in one basket, incase of an emergency or break down, everything will be lost. The licensing of virtual machine software is very expensive. For example, running servers on VMware’s GSX Servers, the cost of license is significantly higher than the cost of the hardware. The virtual technology enforces performance penalty by running an extra layer above the physical hardware but below the guest OS. The performance penalty changes depending on the virtualization software applied and the guest software being run. The performance penalty also means requiring to buy an additional hardware or more expensive one. The licensing inside the guest OS in a virtual machine is complicated. For example, if you load and run windows server 2003 in ten virtual machines and five physical machines, you will be required to pay for several license. The limitation in application of the virtual technology is that not all softwares can be virtualized. Examples are among the applications that need a device driver and 16-bit applications that should be run in a memory that is shared. Some software that requires heavy operation system integration like anti-virus packages and applications are difficult to be virtualized. Where the technology can be used The virtualization technology can be used in organizations for process knowledge systems (PKS). The technology assists the manufacturers to streamline their experion system management and this will bring down the total cost of doing business. In manufacturing industries, process control environment need separate servers to aid different applications, but the virtualization technology has enabled a single server to simultaneously run several Oss and applications. When this technology are applied by the manufactures together with Experion, it will improve server utilization rate, reduce disruptive OS and hardware changes and make the whole system look simple. The virtualization technology can also be applied in health care. Here server virtualization technology where one server is used instead of several servers used; health care providers, where in most circumstances face physical challenges when they want to expand data centers find it a good technology. The technology has been applied by NASA in Enterprise Competency Center (NEACC) to virtualize the hardware materials and server environment that offers applications and services at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and its agencies. Computers and servers when functioning generate a lot of heat and can break down if they are not cooled. The space needed in the data center was reduced by NEACC to 60 percent by use of virtualization. This brings down the power bill by ration 6 to 1 and breakdown was also reduced. The technology can also be applied in the Banks. This will boost the efficiency and speed in the banking information technology sector. This will be achieved through reducing the number of servers and computer hardware’s that are used in the data centers hence bringing down the cost of operation while boosting the organization profits. The field where the virtual technology is applied Kuwait finance houses (KFH) is one of the banks in UAE to apply the virtualization technology. The technology is applied in the organization to boost the efficiency and speed of the organization systems and it also give a chance to the information technology sector to attain the requirements of the organization expansion by simply applying the human resource information technology such as servers for databases and programs, while at the same time improving the system performance at the Bank data centers. The company used v. Sphere 4.0 system from VMware Inc sine it is suitable and good since it meets the Bank requirements. The system reduces the number of servers and hardware devices that are used in the organization. This will bring down the operational expenses like cutting the power consumption and capital hence raising the organization profits. This will also give a chance to more focus on creativity and development task in the information technology department. For future development, the information technology department and the VMware Inc are working together on a plan to execute SRM program that will protect data centers from emergency disasters and sudden breakdown. The system will enable the transfer of all operations from the main data center to the sub centers within a short period of time so that the operation ability of the datacenter can be restored. Other competitive technologies The other technologies that are competing with the virtualization include cloud computing. This technology came up as a result of easy availability of computers. Instead of an organization creating its own data center, they can obtain a service center from internet service providers companies that has outstanding information technology infrastructure that are strong, flexible, and more secured. The cost that would have been spent in building a data center will be saved through acquiring related services on the usage basis. The cost of managed information technology services are the same as the operating costs of a data center. The clouding computing seems to be more attractive than virtualization because it cuts off a lot of costs and more so remove operation cost more than virtualization. There is more security and availability in cloud computing since the information technology infrastructure are decentralized and are managed by ISP that are very dedicated to their resilience and availability and are immune to physical or data disasters. Replication of data over multiple systems ensures data backups. Dedicated data centers service providers are better in capability to keep up the latest security methods and technology upgrades. Redundant array of independent disk (RAID) is another competitive technology to virtualization. This is a technology where several physical hard drives in a computer are divided into an array that can be defined as one or more than one logical drives. Every logical drive appears to the OS as one drive. This technique of grouping hard drives significantly enhances logical drive capacity and performance above the physical limits of one physical drive. When a group of physical drives are put into a logical drive, the serve raid controller will transfer data in parallel from the multiple physical drives in the array. The rise in speed will make the system better to attain the throughput or productivity requirements of multiple-user network environment. The capability of this system to respond to several data request is not only a rise in the throughput, but it is also a reduction in the response time. Comparison between the types of virtualization Server virtualization is the major area of virtualization; this is where a number of virtual machines are created on one server which means that several tasks can be allocated to one server, this will safe power used, cost and spaced occupied. The server virtualization decouples server workloads from the physical hardware. This will enable several OS to run on the same physical server. In this, any network tasks that are going on in the server will appear as if it is on a different space such that any errors can be diagnosed and corrected speedy. The products of this type of virtualization include MS Hyper-V server, MS Virtual server 2005 R2. In terms of management, a standalone Hyper-V server can be managed by use of Hyper-V manager MMC. SCVMM or SCVMM R2 can be applied in the management of a collection of Hyper-V hosts. Desktop virtualization allows one to run an extra OS or operating environment on the standard desktop OS. In this, the end user computer data, its operating system, applications, downloads, preferences, and others are all stored on the VM in a hosted environment that can be hosted by the organization information technology in-house or done in a data center by ISP. Some of the VMs are managed in one single place for all users in the organization and the computing environment is delivered distantly to the consumers. The products involved in this virtualization include MS virtual PC and virtual Windows XP that are available in Windows seven. In terms of management, Microsoft enterprise desktop virtualization (MED-V) can be applied in the management of virtual PC/ virtual windows XP implementations in an enterprise. In storage virtualization, resources of several different network storage devices like hard disks are brought together such that it appears as if they are all single vat of storage. This will then be managed by a central system that will make it appear much simpler to the network administrators. This is a good way to keep an eye on business resources since this will give you a chance to see how much you are remaining with at a given time. This will give administration less hassle when it comes to hardware backups. Presentation virtualization gives a chance for separating processing and data storage from end user desktop. The products that are normally used include Microsoft terminal services or remote desktop services that are available in windows server 2008 R2. In terms of management, native operating system management consoles like terminal services manager, remote desktop virtualization MMC and console can be applied. Network virtualization occurs when all separate resources of a network are brought together giving a chance to the network administrator to share it among several users of the network. This is done through splitting the network resource bandwidth into several channels and allowing the administrator to give out the resources when required. This allows end users to access the entire network resource from their PC. These resources that are being accessed include files and folders on the PC, printers, or hard drives. This technology makes the system looks less complicated to human eye. The impact of virtualization on real life The virtualization has impacted in real life through improved services. In an organization where this technology is applied, there will be less worry in terms of hardware failures. This will be reduced because with tools like VMware’s VMotion, HA, and DRS, the time of recovering incase of failure are extremely reduced. Consolidation of hardware and servers results in easier management and reduction in hardware costs. It will be easier for the management to set up and maintain the physical hardware’s, this will save time and the staff will have extra time to do some other works. Many machines in an organization also consume a lot of power, in the circumstances of virtual technology less power will be consumed reducing the cost of operations This means that the organization will loose very little money as a result of outage, and as a result every tracked outage can be tallied up and compated to the pre-virtualization outages giving a good return of investment. The use of mobile virtualization have had an impact in real life, since it has let to users having two mobile phones; one for business purposes and the other for personal use. With the technology, handsets can support several profiles on the same hardware such that the enterprise information technology sector can secure manage single profile (in a virtual machine), and the handset owner can separately manage the other profile (in a virtual machine).mobile virtualization has the capability to support handset devices by use of single-core or multiple processor. In real life, the application of virtualization technology results in service reduction in terms of management. Back up and DR are the main services that can be reduced. For example smart business backs up many virtual machines by use of storage snapshots or virtual machine snapshots and then takes them snapshots to remote places without necessarily tapping. This means no more tapes pickup which is a reduction in services. Even in those business organizations that have systems where data backups in the guest machine still require to be completed, there will be a huge reduction in services because there is a big reduction in tapes used and stored. Restoring information under this is also faster. For example, if a file server fails as a result of operating system corruption caused by conflicting set of patches, it can be restored from the snapshots and business continues. There will be no call for tape or waiting for delivery, all little time will be spent. The latest features of virtualization The latest features in virtualization include Spiceworks 4.6; this feature allows the user to get more of information technology work done. In Spiceworks, user can see and kill processes on devices straight from Spiceworks, this will get rid of a situation where one will have to work to the machine to operate or even launching the remote control utility. Spiceworks also discover the VMware network virtualization server; it shows all the virtual machine data on the server as well as the details such as RAM and hard drive space. VirtualBox 3.2 beta Adds Mac OS X Virtualization is a new feature that runs only on the apple hardware. It provides java bindings, restores Ubuntu Lucid VM with 3D effects, in Linux, the shared folders kernel module can be loaded in demand, and it has new guest extra icons and many GUI advancements. The introduction of XenServer 5.6 by Citrix Synergy has provided enhanced virtualization management abilities for free XenServer together with advanced high enterprise and platinum editions. Following the creation of XenServer advanced optimized for desktop and dynamic memory control, the virtualization technology can now be accessed easily by business organization irrespective of their budget. The Fedora 14 was recently released into the market and it has several features. For example Red Hat-sponsored Fedora, which is the most popular Linux feature, has made important improvements in networking, management of software, support of machine hardware, and other functions that later came. Together with improvised desktop environment, it has also provided features enhancement such as libjpegturbo, this feature provides a library that brings noticeable performance improvements to customers who load and save images in the commonly used JPEG format. Cost of virtualization The significant decrease in machines hardware and operational overheads brings down the cost of running an organization. The market has moved on from the original phase where x 86 servers was the only one available with VMware having the market itself. Currently there are other important players that are running, like Citrix and Microsoft and with every company are chasing the mainstream hence the prices associated with the past market is now changing. The virtual machines work with speed and ease and they can be created and provisioned, this brings down the operations overhead. The virtualization organization sometimes introduces other operation overhead and yet in the first place it was meant to reduce them, like software licensing. Sometimes, there will be an additional cost of having to recreate problems on a hardware machine before support can be acquired from the software vendors that refuses to accept the legitimacy of their software in a virtualized environment. Sometimes in virtualization there are surprises since the organization can incur more expenses and the real target was to reduce through virtualization. Conclusion In summary, virtualization has greatly improved the processing of information in various organizations. This technology has lead to the use of a few computers that can multitask thus eliminating the need to have many physical computers. The greatest operation challenge is creating the right infrastructure for monitoring and managing virtual machines. Organizations therefore have to train their staff to get the necessary skills, and regular upgrading of the system, and networking infrastructure. In my opinion, further research has to be done in this field so as to maximize the hidden potential in the world of business. References Bernard, G. (2007). Virtualization for Dummies. New York: Safari Books Online. Pg 132 Dale V. (2009). Counting the cost of virtualization. Retrieved on 25/ 11/ 2010 from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/10/avoiding_nasty_virtualization_suprises/ Harrisdy. (2005). History of Virtualization. Retrieved on 25/ 11/ 2010 from http://www.infobarrel.com/History_of_Virtualization Joshua. (2006). Pre-Virtualization: Slashing the Cost of Virtualization. Sydney: University of New South Wales. Wellie C. (2006). The Pros and Cons of Virtual Machines in the Datacenter. Retrieved on 25/11/ 2010 from http://www.devx.com/vmspecialreport/Article/30383 Read More

What is virtualization? Virtualization is the creation of virtual version of a certain device or resource like a server, storage device, network or OS where the framework divides the resource to more than one for execution environments. For example, even partitioning of hard disk into two or more partitions is virtualization since you take one drive and divide to create two different hard drives. Devices, human users, and applications can interact freely together with the virtual device as if it was a one logical device.

OS virtualization is the application of a certain type of software to permit a piece of hardware to run several OS images concurrently. Virtualization software was quickly adopted in 2005 by ever body including the experts. There are 3 areas of information technology where virtualization is mainly applied, this are; network visualization, this is a method of bringing together the available resources in a network by dividing the given bandwidth into several channels. Every channel does not depend on another and can be assigned a particular server or device in real time and vice versa.

The idea is that virtualization can divide the network into several parts that can be easily managed; storage virtualization is bring together different physical storage from different network storage devices into what will look like one storage device that can be easily managed from central console. This technology is normally applied in storage area networks (SAN); server virtualization is the masking of server resources from server users (Bernard, 2007). The reason for this is to assist the user from having to learn and manage complicated details of server resources at the same time raising the resource sharing and utilization and keeping the capacity in order to expand later.

Virtualization is seen as part of an overall trend in enterprise information technology which includes autonomic computing, a situation in which the information technology environment is capable of managing itself depending on the perceived activity and utility computing where computer processing power is viewed as a utility that the users can pay for when needed. The real goal of virtualization is to bring together administrative work at the same time improving scalability and work loads. What problems does virtualization solve?

The virtual machines were developed to solve the past problems of typical third generations’ architects and multi-programming operating systems like OS/360. Those architects had dual-state hardware organization, a privileged and non-privileged mode. Virtualization allows for the reduction of hardware to be managed or in other words, it solves the problem of replication, this will reduce expenses and save time. In an organization if you do not have enough staff, virtualization can solved this problem because bringing together several hard wares and soft wares together will require few staff to work on.

Virtual machines have the capability of running legacy applications. Legacy application sometimes cannot run in new hard wares or OSs. If it manages to run, it may underutilize the server; this will require consolidation of several applications. This will be solved by virtualization. Virtualization in an organization reduces the outlays that occur with hardware and power; it also improves the availability and decrease the amount of disaster recovery. The use of storage area network (SAN) allows virtual machines to share several storage resources that are of standard, while at the same time virtualization allows several servers to share the same host.

Virtualization solves the problem of application containment in OS that does not have LSSP functions and when several independent super users are required. The new software released by the composite software known as composite information server data virtualization platform has faster algorithm features that automate the business-critical steps of finding and understanding source data, this will speed up the data modeling step of data visualization (Bernard, 2007).

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