UNIT I INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUALIZATION

7
Virtualization and cloud computing - Need of virtualization – cost, administration, fast
deployment, reduce infrastructure cost – limitations- Types of hardware virtualization: Full
virtualization - partial virtualization – Para virtualization-Types of Hypervisors

Introduction to Virtualization

Virtualization is a technique, which allows to share single physical instance of

an application or resource among multiple organizations or tenants (customers).
It does so by assigning a logical name to a physical resource and providing a
pointer to that physical resource on demand.

Virtualization Concept

Creating a virtual machine over existing operating system and hardware is

referred as Hardware Virtualization. Virtual Machines provide an environment
that is logically separated from the underlying hardware.
The machine on which the virtual machine is created is known as host machine
and virtual machine is referred as a guest machine. This virtual machine is
managed by a software or firmware, which is known as hypervisor.

Hypervisor

The hypervisor is a firmware or low-level program that acts as a Virtual

Machine Manager. There are two types of hypervisor:
Type 1 hypervisor executes on bare system. LynxSecure, RTS Hypervisor,
Oracle VM, Sun xVM Server, VirtualLogic VLX are examples of Type 1
hypervisor. The following diagram shows the Type 1 hypervisor.
The type1 hypervisor does not have any host operating system because they are
installed on a bare system.
Type 2 hypervisor is a software interface that emulates the devices with which a
system normally interacts. Containers, KVM, Microsoft Hyper V, VMWare
Fusion, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Virtual PC and VMWare
workstation 6.0 are examples of Type 2 hypervisor. The following diagram
shows the Type 2 hypervisor.
Types of Hardware Virtualization

Here are the three types of hardware virtualization:

 Full Virtualization
 Emulation Virtualization
 Paravirtualization

Full Virtualization

In full virtualization, the underlying hardware is completely simulated. Guest

software does not require any modification to run.
Emulation Virtualization
In Emulation, the virtual machine simulates the hardware and hence becomes
independent of it. In this, the guest operating system does not require
modification.
Paravirtualization
In Paravirtualization, the hardware is not simulated. The guest software run their
own isolated domains.
VIRTUALIZATION FOR CLOUD

Virtualization is a technology that helps us to install different Operating

Systems on a hardware. They are completely separated and independent from
each other. In Wikipedia, you can find the definition as – “In computing,
virtualization is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources.
Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of computing resources from
their users, their applications or end users. This includes making a single physical
resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application or a storage
device) appear to function as multiple virtual resources. It can also include
making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as
a single virtual resource...”
Virtualization is often −

 The creation of many virtual resources from one physical resource.

 The creation of one virtual resource from one or more physical resource.
Types of Virtualization

Today the term virtualization is widely applied to a number of concepts, some of

which are described below −

 Server Virtualization
 Client & Desktop Virtualization
 Services and Applications Virtualization
 Network Virtualization
 Storage Virtualization
Let us now discuss each of these in detail.

Server Virtualization

It is virtualizing your server infrastructure where you do not have to use any
more physical servers for different purposes.

Client & Desktop Virtualization

This is similar to server virtualization, but this time is on the user’s site where
you virtualize their desktops. We change their desktops with thin clients and by
utilizing the datacenter resources.
Services and Applications Virtualization

The virtualization technology isolates applications from the underlying operating

system and from other applications, in order to increase compatibility and
manageability. For example – Docker can be used for that purpose.

Network Virtualization

It is a part of virtualization infrastructure, which is used especially if you are

going to visualize your servers. It helps you in creating multiple switching,
Vlans, NAT-ing, etc.
The following illustration shows the VMware schema −
Storage Virtualization

This is widely used in datacenters where you have a big storage and it helps you
to create, delete, allocated storage to different hardware. This allocation is done
through network connection. The leader on storage is SAN. A schematic
illustration is given below −
Understanding Different Types of Hypervisors

A hypervisor is a thin software layer that intercepts operating system calls to the
hardware. It is also called as the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). It creates a
virtual platform on the host computer, on top of which multiple guest operating
systems are executed and monitored.
Hypervisors are two types −

 Native of Bare Metal Hypervisor and

 Hosted Hypervisor
Let us now discuss both of these in detail.

Native or Bare Metal Hypervisor

Native hypervisors are software systems that run directly on the host's hardware
to control the hardware and to monitor the Guest Operating Systems.
The guest
operating system runs on a separate level above the hypervisor. All of them have
a Virtual Machine Manager.
Examples of this virtual machine architecture are Oracle VM, Microsoft Hyper-
V, VMWare ESX and Xen.

Hosted Hypervisor

Hosted hypervisors are designed to run within a traditional operating system. In

other words, a hosted hypervisor adds a distinct software layer on top of the host
operating system. While, the guest operating system becomes a third software
level above the hardware.
A well-known example of a hosted hypervisor is Oracle VM VirtualBox.
Others include VMWare Server and Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC,
KVM, QEMUand Parallels.
Understanding Local Virtualization and Cloud

Virtualization is one of the fundamental technologies that makes cloud-

computing work. However, virtualization is not cloud computing. Cloud
computing is a service that different providers offer to you based on some costs.
In enterprise networks, virtualization and cloud computing are often used
together to build a public or private cloud infrastructure. In small businesses,
each technology will be deployed separately to gain measurable benefits. In
different ways, virtualization and cloud computing can help you keep your
equipment spending to a minimum and get the best possible use from the
equipment you already have.
As mentioned before, virtualization software allows one physical server to run
several individual computing environments. In practice, it is like getting multiple
servers for each physical server you buy. This technology is fundamental to
cloud computing. Cloud providers have large data centers full of servers to power
their cloud offerings, but they are not able to devote a single server to each
customer. Thus, they virtually partition the data on the server, enabling each
client to work with a separate “virtual” instance (which can be a private network,
servers farm, etc.) of the same software.
 Small businesses are most likely to adopt cloud computing by subscribing to a
cloud- based service. The largest providers of cloud computing are
Microsoft with Azure and Amazon.
The following illustration is provided by Microsoft where you can understand
how utilizing extra infrastructure for your business without the need to spend
extra money helps. You can have the on-premises base infrastructure, while on
cloud you can have all your services, which are based on Virtualized technology.

Need of Virtualization and its Reference Model

There are five major needs of virtualization which are described below:

Figure: Major needs of Virtualization.

1. ENHANCED PERFORMANCE-
Currently, the end user system i.e. PC is sufficiently powerful to fulfill all the basic
computation requirements of the user, with various additional capabilities which are rarely
used by the user. Most of their systems have sufficient resources which can host a virtual
machine manager and can perform a virtual machine with acceptable performance so far.

2. LIMITED USE OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE RESOURCES-

The limited use of the resources leads to under-utilization of hardware and software
resources. As all the PCs of the user are sufficiently capable to fulfill their regular
computational needs that’s why many of their computers are used often which can be used
24/7 continuously without any interruption. The efficiency of IT infrastructure could be
increase by using these resources after hours for other purposes. This environment is possible
to attain with the help of Virtualization.

3. SHORTAGE OF SPACE-

The regular requirement for additional capacity, whether memory storage or compute power,
leads data centers raise rapidly. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon develop their
infrastructure by building data centers as per their needs. Mostly, enterprises unable to pay to
build any other data center to accommodate additional resource capacity. This heads to the
diffusion of a technique which is known as server consolidation.

4. ECO-FRIENDLY INITIATIVES-

At this time, corporations are actively seeking for various methods to minimize their
expenditures on power which is consumed by their systems. Data centers are main power
consumers and maintaining a data center operations needs a continuous power supply as well
as a good amount of energy is needed to keep them cool for well-functioning. Therefore,
server consolidation drops the power consumed and cooling impact by having a fall in
number of servers. Virtualization can provide a sophisticated method of server
consolidation.

5. ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS-
Furthermore, the rise in demand for capacity surplus, that convert into more servers in a data
center, accountable for a significant increase in administrative costs. Hardware monitoring,
server setup and updates, defective hardware replacement, server resources monitoring, and
backups are included in common system administration tasks. These are personnel-intensive
operations. The administrative costs is increased as per the number of servers. Virtualization
decreases number of required servers for a given workload, hence reduces the cost of
administrative employees.

VIRTUALIZATION REFERENCE MODEL-

Figure: Reference Model of Virtualization.

Three major Components falls under this category in a virtualized environment:
1. GUEST:
The guest represents the system component that interacts with the virtualization layer
rather than with the host, as would normally happen. Guests usually consist of one or
more virtual disk files, and a VM definition file. Virtual Machines are centrally
 managed by a host application that sees and manages each virtual machine as a
different application.
2. HOST:
The host represents the original environment where the guest is supposed to be
managed. Each guest runs on the host using shared resources donated to it by the host.
The operating system, works as the host and manages the physical resource
management, and the device support.
3. VIRTUALIZATION LAYER:
The virtualization layer is responsible for recreating the same or a different
environment where the guest will operate. It is an additional abstraction layer between
a network and storage hardware, computing, and the application running on it.
Usually it helps to run a single operating system per machine which can be very
inflexible compared to the usage of virtualization.