Virtualization

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual version of a device or resource, such as a server, storage device, network or even an operating system.

Why Virtualization?

• Save on Energy for IT Equipments like servers.
• Save on Space requirements in server Racks.
• Save on physical machine costs.
• Save on storage costs.
• Save on Maintenance Costs.
• Save on time if any server failover.

Various Virtualization Softwares

VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix etc

Host, guest and virtual machine

A host system (host operating system) would be the primary & first installed operating system.

A guest system (guest operating system) is a virtual guest or virtual machine (VM) that is installed under the host operating system. The guests are the VMs that you run in your virtualization platform.

Types of Virtual Hard Disks

There are two basic types of VHDs

• Fixed-size disks.
• Dynamically expanding disks.

A fixed-size VHD is one for which data blocks are pre-allocated on a physical disk based on the maximum VHD size defined at the time of creation.

A dynamically expanding VHD is one for which the initial virtual hard disk contains no data blocks. Instead space is dynamically allocated as data is written to the VHD, up to the maximum size specified when the virtual hard disk was created.

VMware - Video tutorials

VMware Training - Introduction to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor

Source: Portal Content Team