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09.14.06
The Buzz About Virtualization
 By
Matt Peterson
There is a lot of buzz going around about Virtualization. What is Virtualization,
and what benefits does it provide?
In this article we will take a look at the technology to see how it can provide a great deal of flexibility and cost effectiveness for IT professionals and software developers.
Virtualization technology allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single host computer. These virtual machines can run different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux and UNIX. Each virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardware resources (e.g., CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, etc) allowing the operating system to run as if it were installed on a physical machine.
The benefits of Virtualization technology are far reaching. Many organizations
have moved to the virtual machine solution to consolidate multiple servers, running
side by side on a single physical machine.
Server consolidation allows IT professionals to fully utilize server resources,
while isolating virtual machines and allowing them to run different operating
systems and applications.
Software developers utilize virtual machine technology to quickly test applications
on different operating systems, without the hassle of setting up multiple physical
machines for testing or taking the risk of causing problems by testing in a production
environment.
You can run Virtualization software on pretty much any platform. Once the software
is installed it is simple to create virtual machine instances. Virtual machines
are just a set of files located on the host machine.
You configure your virtual machine settings on the host computer, install the
operating system and you are ready to go. It is a very common practice to use
a master image of a virtual machine.
This master image can be a fully configured machine, with the operating system
and all required applications installed. You can then rapidly deploy virtual machines
by copying the master image to multiple Virtualization hosts to provide zero downtime
and 100% server availability.
There are a number of Virtualization products available. VMWare, which is probably
the most popular, recently announced that it will be releasing a free version
of its GSX Server product.
This will allow any organization to host virtual machines on either Windows or
Linux hosts. Other Virtualization products include Microsoft's Virtual Server
and SWsoft's Virtuozzo, just to name a few.
About
the Author:
Matt Peterson is a Senior Consultant for N2
Network Solutions, Visit
N2 online.
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