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1. Understanding Virtualization.
   1. Two types of Virtualization.
      1. Hardware Partitioning.
      2. Hypervisor Technology.
   2. Benefits of Virtualization.
      1. Reducing Costs of Hardware.
      2. Optimized Adjustment of System Resources.
      3. Easy overview of all IT resources at a glance.

Understanding Virtualization.

Virtualization is a concept that allows the abstraction of Hardware from the users or the Operation system. In simple terms it means allowing several operating systems to run on a single computer without the operating systems being aware of the fact.

Conversely, virtualization can also be used to pool dozens of computers and computer hardware together in such a way that they run as a single or multiple units.

Two types of Virtualization.

One can think of virtualization in two ways:

Hardware Partitioning.

This means that you physically dissect the server hardware in and run an operating system on each sector. This has the advantage of physically separating the resources used by various Operating systems.

However, several benefits are lost in this approach, one of which is using overpowered hardware to carry several operating systems. In fact, one might argue that Hardware Partitioning defeats the purpose of Virtualization.

Hypervisor Technology.

Hypervisor technology refers to placing a layer of software between the hardware and the multiple Operating systems (called guest operating systems) (or otherwise as we will see below) that will share the same hardware. The software layer called the hypervisor intercepts the requests from the guest operating systems and handles them in such a way that the operating systems have no idea that they are sharing resources.

Since the Hypervisor technology is one offering most of the benefits of virtualization, we are going to be focusing only on this technology for the rest of the article.

Benefits of Virtualization.

Virtualization offers the following Benefits.

Reducing Costs of Hardware.

Since you can have many users using the same hardware, you save on the cost of buying multiple computers for each person.

Optimized Adjustment of System Resources.

Different users require different resources at various points of time. Without virtualization, some hardware will be strained, and some hardware will be underused at any given point. Virtualization handles this problem by dynamically allocating resources amongst the various operating systems as and when the need arises.

Easy overview of all IT resources at a glance.

When you use virtualization, you find that you are able to take a bird’s eye view of all your IT resources. This is because you are not concerned with their physical location that may be scattered in many different places. Instead you view logical systems that are easy to understand and consolidate.

>> Part 2- Types of Hypervisor Technology

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Server Virtualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.