CTO: virtualization

Virtualization

cloud computing depends on virtualization

do you know…

what it is?

why it is good?

if you should be using it?

What virtualization is.

replication, emulation and provisioning of a physical IT resource through software

popular virtualized resources:

servers

storage

networks

all software has to ultimately run on hardware, so what do we mean?

specialized virtualisation software interfaces between physical hardware and a self contained software version

of a resource

What makes it good.

hardware independence

as the virtual resource does not interface with the hardware – it emulates and standardizes

resources through software based copies

making it hardware independent

which means moving virtual resource to a different physical resource, cloning, copying

or manipulating virtual resources is easy

server consolidation

virtualization allows for one physical resource to host many virtual resources

through load balancing and optimization capabilities of the virtualization software hardware resources can be optimized

operational agility

the virtual resource is software; stored as a binary file known as a Virtual Disk Image. Like documents these files can be copied,

moved, saved and deleted. Which means…

pre-packaged resources and applications can be instantaneously deployed

the ability to rapidly manipulate and deploy

virtual resource provides the business the agility to quickly scale out and up

business continuity

resources being virtual disk images allows for snapshot backups, along with instantaneous

deployment, a sound business continuity strategy facilitates…

instantaneous roll back and restore

high redundancy architecture

Should you be using it already?

for you to consider if you should use virtual resources, let us discuss the down

sides to virtualization

physical resource performance inefficiencies: the virtualisation software

and host operating system consume physical resource which is then not

available to the virtual resources e.g. processor and memory

latency performance inefficiencies: physical hardware resource calls from the virtual resource have to go through the

virtualisation software and host OS

cost inefficiencies: additional to the host OS license, each virtual resources may

also require a license

to combat these inefficiencies there is an option for ‘Hardware-based

virtualization’, but this impacts on the benefits of hardware independence

therefore virtualization may not suited to:

high workload systems with limited requirements for physical resource

sharing or scaling

however if virtualization is suited to you…

it is likely that cloud based virtualisation is right for you

What do you think? Contact CTO for a freeconsultation to find out how the cloud and

virtualization can benefit you

www.cto.uk.cominfo@cto.uk.com

tel: 0044 (0)20 3478 9049