Virtualization and It’s Types

Virtualization is basically a creation of a virtual version of something, such as an operating system (OS), a server, a storage device or network resources. OS virtualization is the use of software to allow a piece of hardware to run multiple operating system images at the same time. The technology got its start on mainframes decades ago, allowing administrators to avoid wasting expensive processing power.

How it Works ?
With virtualization, an application, a guest OS or data storage is separated from the underlying software or hardware. A thin software layer, known as a hypervisor, reproduces the functions and actions of the underlying hardware for the abstracted hardware or software, creating multiple virtual machines on a single physical system.

Types of Virtualization

1.Server Virtualization:
The Server Virtualization is the division of the physical server into multiple virtual servers for efficient utilization of server resources. Virtualization of the servers hides or masks server resources such as processor, operating system, memory, and presents users as a private virtual server. This kind of virtualization technique is used in

• Web-servers mainly so as to reduce the cost of web hosting services.
• In development and testing environments.
• Simulation of private cloud.
• In hosting applications that have a clustered architecture.

Example — VMware vSphere suite by VMware, Hyper-V by Microsoft are some Hypervisors for server virtualization.

2.Storage virtualization:
In Storage virtualization, it pools all the storage devices as a single storage device and presents it to the host. So, with this, the storage administrator will be able to create or design logical storage units in a better way so as to have backup, recovery, archive and application data type of storage by masking the complexity of the SAN (Storage Area Network).

Advantages of Storage Virtualization are –

• One can create shared storage easily.
• Easy to pool the storage resources masking the SAN.
• With virtual storage, failure of the host doesn’t compromise the data necessarily.
• It is easy to protect partition and use the storage with storage virtualization.
• Duplication, Re-duplication, replication and disaster recovery can be achieved with storage virtualization.

Examples — VMware vSAN by VMware is widely used as the software for the virtualization of storage devices.

3. Operating System Virtualization:
Operating System virtualization is the type where the division of OS happens. That is the core of the Operating System which in other words referred to as the kernel resources get shared and allow isolated instances of namespaces to exist with dedicated resources to run different applications. These instances are called containers.

Different flavours of Operating Systems which share the kernel resources of the host can be run on that host machine with applications running inside them as container and this is called an Operating System Virtualization.

Advantages of Operating System Virtualization are –

1. These are quicker than the server virtualization.
2. These are autonomous platforms as they share the host operating system’s storage funds and have their software and libraries of dependence within them.
3. The migration of this container is very easy.

Example — Docker is the most widely used container engine.

4. Software Virtualization:
Cloud provides a service model as Software as a Service (SaaS) where several customers might want several instances of the same software installed and running for them. Software virtualizations basically emulate a complete computer system and also allows another Operating System to run on top of it.

• For example, installing an android studio on your local windows machine and running Android Oreo version of OS inside it. To quote another example, installing VMware or VirtualBox on your Windows local machine and running Linux Operating Systems inside it.

Advantages of Software Virtualization are –

1. The number of servers and other physical resources to be owned gets reduced with the employment of virtualization. Thus reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO).
2. Virtualization helps to fulfil the promises of the Cloud Computing business model.
3. Business continuity and disaster management are handled easier with the virtualization concept and backup and recovery can be done in some simple steps.
4. Virtualization improves the efficiency of resource consumption.
5. Virtualization also provides better security to the environment.

5. Memory Virtualization:
Memory Virtualization introduces a way to decouple memory from the processor and from the server to provide a shared, distributed or networked function. This is not a more addressable memory but virtualized memory shared between multiple machines. It enhances performance by providing greater memory capacity without any addition to the main memory. That’s why a portion of the disk drive serves as an extension of the main memory.

6. CPU Virtualization:
CPU Virtualization is one of the cloud-computing technology that requires a single CPU to work, which acts as multiple machines working together. This is like running two separate computers on a single physical machine. The most common reason for doing this is to run two different operating systems on one machine. The aim of CPU virtualization is to make a CPU run in the same way as if two separate CPUs would run.

7. I/O Virtualization:
I/O virtualization involves managing the routing of I/O requests between virtual devices and the shared physical hardware. Mainly, there are three ways to implement I/O virtualization: full device emulation, para-virtualization, and direct I/O. Science it separates logical from physical resources, IOV is considered an enabling data center technology that aggregates IT infrastructure as a shared pool, including computing, networking and storage

Mainly Virtualization means, running multiple operating systems on a single machine and sharing all the hardware resources. Thus, it helps us to provide the pool of IT resources so that we can share these IT resources in order get benefits in the business