Virtualization an overview

One of the most sounding technologies in the updates of the recent IT escalation is that of virtualization. Probably the immense possibilities that virtualization open in terms of cost effective server infrastructure, maintenance and storage has destined the industrialist and entrepreneurs to pick up this technology as a part of their workspace. Advent of cloud computing has powered virtualization to the next stage where you don’t need to own the hardware and the staff. 

Often, the newbie’s who seek opportunities in IT have a lot of ambiguity in the concept of virtualization and its potentials. In computing, Virtualization is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. Virtualization allows multiple operating system and workloads to run concurrently on a same physical hardware, it solves the tight coupling between OS and hardware.

For many, the distinction between the traditional server model and virtual server model is a matter of abstraction. In a traditional server concept there is only a single OS image per machine where software and hardware is tightly coupled, here running multiple application on the same machine often creates conflict. The traditional server is identified as inflexible and costly in terms of infrastructure. Whereas in a virtual server there is an independence of OS and application, here the virtual server can manage OS and application as a single unit by encapsulating them into a virtual machine. Hence virtual machine provides hardware independence – Guest VM see the same hardware regardless of the host hardware, Isolation – VM’s operating system is isolated from the host operating system and Encapsulation – entire VM encapsulated to a single file.

On scaling virtualization from an industrial perspective it is vivid that virtualization offers many benefits and foremost of which is lowering IT infrastructure investments and maintenance. 

It is noteworthy that most companies who have migrated and adopted different virtualization solutions significantly lowered their expenditures for server infrastructures, server maintenance, data-storage and network set-up. That is why it is not surprising to see that more and more large enterprises are getting interested in virtualization and actually adopting the technology for their IT environments. 

Virtualization is a technology solution that allows many virtual machines to operate and run in a single physical computer resource. It also enables the physical machine to run different operating systems through the virtual machines. So for a large company that normally uses only 40% of its server resources, the extra hardware can be balanced by building several virtual servers and individual virtual workstations. It eliminated the need for more hardware investments and reduced also maintenance costs.

Virtualization solutions can also be applied in building a network. Virtual networks actually are getting very popular because it will not require too much hardware expenditures. A company only need to upgrade the computing performance of their system and a virtual network can run on it perfectly.

Virtualization solution is also ideal for large data centers and storage systems. A single data center could be configured to create multiple virtual storage devices.  Data hardware maintenance therefore can also be eliminated. 

Virtualization provides a better testing environment. If you make a tragic mistake, all is NOT lost. Just revert to a previous snapshot and you can move forward as if the mistake didn’t even happen. You can also isolate these testing environments from end users while still keeping them online. 

Disaster recovery is also quite a bit easier when your data center is virtualized. With up-to-date snapshots of your virtual machines, you can quickly get back up and running. And should disaster strike the data center itself, you can always move those virtual machines elsewhere 

With a move to virtual machines, a company is much closer to enjoying a full-blown cloud environment. But beyond the actual virtual machines, virtualized technology gets you closer to a cloud-based mindset, making the migration all the more easy. This development brings the IT solution to a higher flexible milieu.

Virtualization is a vital component of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 5.4 or later include the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) that takes advantage of the latest hardware virtualization capabilities and is tightly integrated with the Linux kernel. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 also includes an enterprise-hardened variant of the Xen-based virtualization technology.

As per an IDC report in Q1, 2013, “The most positive growth rates in IT field came from virtualization markets” & 9 out of 10 public clouds run on Red Hat based Technologies. The global survey on opportunities in IT industries brings out that the demand of certified virtualization professions in the contemporary IT industry has risen to an unprecedented height. Being certified gives an extra nudge to a comfortable placement in the industry.  Among the top virtualization certification like VMware, Red Hat, Microsoft, Citrix etc… it goes without a second thought that Red Hat has a maximum growth in the virtualization market.

In this scenario of flexible IT and as virtualization proliferates throughout the enterprise markets, IT professionals with the necessary skills to support a growing virtualization environment are among the most sought-after individuals. Hence the fairest solution to enjoy this benefit is to get the expertise in virtualization technology.