Virtualization, is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources.Virtualization can be viewed as part of an overall trend in enterprise IT that includes autonomic computing, a scenario in which the IT environment will be able to manage itself based on perceived activity, and utility computing, in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for only as needed. The usual goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and workloads
Virtualization Solutions
+ Hardware Virtualization
Computer hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from users, instead showing another abstract computing platform. The software that controls the virtualization used to be called a “control program” at its origins, but nowadays the terms “hypervisor” or “virtual machine monitor” are preferred.
+ Application Virtualization
Application virtualization is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is still executed as if it were. The application is fooled at runtime into believing that it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, when in reality it is not. In this context, the term “virtualization” refers to the artefact being encapsulated (application), which is quite different to its meaning in hardware virtualization, where it refers to the artefact being abstracted (physical hardware).
+ Operating System Virtualization
Operating system-level virtualization is a server virtualization method where the kernel of an operating system allows for multiple isolated user-space instances, instead of just one. Such instances (often called containers, VEs, VPSs or jails) may look and feel like a real server, from the point of view of its owner. On Unix systems, this technology can be thought of as an advanced implementation of the standard root mechanism. In addition to isolation mechanisms, the kernel often provides resource management features to limit the impact of one container’s activities on the other containers.
