This report focuses on understanding three set of technologies which are data center, hypervisors-based server virtualization technology and container based virtualization. The report provides an in-depth definition of these technologies and analyze how they work, their benefits and why we need them as well as comparing different examples cutting across the three technologies.
A data center is a computer room where most of the organization’s servers resides, managed and controlled [1]. This is the reason why it is also referred to as the server room. All the organization’s information and data is stored at data center where its databases and other storage devices are located. Data centers consist of four major components that makes it functional [2]. These components include:
Support infrastructure
These include all the hardware equipment which enable the data center to function properly. Such equipment include the air conditioners for regulating the server room temperatures, backup power supplies such as generators, UPS, among others. All these infrastructures provide support and ensure that the functions of the data center are running smoothly without any hitches.
White space
This is the space or the environment to be used by the data center. A white space can be an environment of raised floor expressed in square feet or just a square floor that is not raised.
IT Infrastructure
This include all the servers and storage devices, networking equipment such as cables, switches, routers, among others. It also include management applications or systems used to provide organization’s computing services.
Operations Staff
These include maintenance and upgrades of the support and IT infrastructure. It include technical operations and support systems for the facilities provided by the designated staff within the data center.
There are many organizational operations performed in a data center. These include all the processes which can be computing or non-computing in nature and which are performed specifically within enterprise data center [3]. The operations include all the manual and automated processes that help in maintaining the data center in proper operational state. Some of the data center operations include the following:
Security operations
These include all the equipment, processes and applied technologies that guarantees quality and maximum security of both the infrastructure (physical) and functionalities of the data center. This include the security of the data stored and processed within the data center. Security is a very critical operation of the data center for any organization.
Management operations
These are all operations that involve definition, implementation and control of all the procedures and policies set for processes within a data center [4].
Infrastructure operations
These operations covers the installation, maintenance, carrying updates and monitoring of data center infrastructure such as network information and equipment, storage and server devices.
Cooling and power supply operations
These data center operations include all the activities that guarantees maximum power supply and controlling of cooling system within the data center room.
Data centers are grouped into tiers. This criteria was defined by Uptime institute and it was aimed at evaluating the infrastructure of a data center [5]. The use of data tiers classification system enable the comparison of data centers uniqueness in terms of customized facilities and the performance of the data center infrastructure. This criteria therefor lead to four categories of the data center which include: Tier I, Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV. Organizations choose the type of data center they need based on their business needs and sensitivity of their data.
Tier I provides a basic server room with no duplication of its active components or distribution methods hence a system failure and module failure affects the functionalities of the server. Tier II category consist of a data center that is concurrently maintainable hence preventive operations can be performed without halting the data center [6]. There is also duplication of active components and distribution methods. Tier III on the other hand consist of a data center with only one distribution method and supports duplication of all active components such as UPS, networking devices, etc. The last category which is Tier IV is a data center which has the two infrastructure that is it supports both the distribution and active components paths [7]. This kind of a data center is fault tolerant.
There are many data centers in the Australian market that provide data center services to many organizations. Some of the largest data centers present within the Australian market include Equinix and Nextdc. These two data centers have dominated the Australian market and have opened their sites in major cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra due to high demands from their customers.
This is a computer program that allows the server to run different virtual machines on just a single computer hardware infrastructure. This technology enables each virtual machine to run their own computer programs while the set up appears to have its own memory, hardware processor and other computer resources [8]. This in reality is done by the hypervisor which allocates the resources to these virtual machines running on one server or computer hardware.
This kind of server executes the hypervisor program which upon execution runs each virtual machines operating system and allocate to CPU resources, storage space, memory, bandwidth among other computer resources [9].
This kind of technology is mostly used by system administrators due to its virtualization feature that provides a very critical layer that allows management and controlling of infrastructure and computing resources over the data center and the organizations [10].
The technology is also used to provide scalability or expansion of the organizations data center infrastructure without having to think about a physical location [11]. For instance, all the storage resources can be virtualized using storage hypervisors by creating centralized storage resources without having to worry about their physical location.
Also with hypervisor based servers, it is possible to create, manage, control, change and destroy networks by the use of software without having to touch any physical networking device.
There are many examples of hypervisor-based server examples used to create virtual machines. These include VMWare vSphere, VirtualBox, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation, PowerVM, Hyper-V, among many others [11]. All this hypervisors differs in one way or another in terms of their functionalities and infrastructure. The following shows the comparison between ESXi and Openstack.
This is a technology that enables software to run effectively and reliably when it is moved from one platform to another [12]. For instance, when a software is moved from the developer’s environment such as laptop to a test environment say data center to a virtual machine hosted in a physical or cloud environment, container helps that software to execute the same way it was executing on the developers laptop. This technology provides an entire run time environment which include all the applications and their dependencies, configuration files and libraries required to execute an application all grouped into one package [13]. This abstract the different OS distribution platforms as well as the software underlying infrastructure hence enhancing interoperability.
This particular technology brings with it great benefits which support the operations of data centers and hypervisors [12]. Some of the reason why container-based virtualization is important are:
It Support great modularity
This technology allows a complex software or application to be split into small modules rather than having it executed in a single container. The application can therefore be divided into backend, front end, databases among others. This feature makes it easy to manage the software since managing the modules is a bit simpler than managing the entire application all at once.
Another benefit of container-based virtualization is that they provide “just in time” operations. That is they can be executed instantly when they are needed and then stopped when they are no longer required hence releasing the resources for other machines or software to use. This feature of container based virtualization overcomes the problem associated with virtual machines where it takes several minutes to start their operating systems and execute the applications hosted on them.
A single container based servers can host many containers than when using virtual machines. This is because containers are smaller in size and they take about tens of megabyte of the entire server size.
There are many containerization software such as lxc, docker, Microsoft virtual server, Ansible, among others [14]. The following provides two examples of container based virtualization by looking at their similarities and differences.
LXC
This is s full system container based virtualization that uses sandbox to run concurrent processes. This server is considered a container for operating system since it runs operating system instances. It is an alternative for virtual machine and is mostly used by Ops team in need of lightweight applications.
Docker
Both the docker and LXC shares the foundational components. That is, they both have similar goal of creating lightweight isolated processes.
They both use the same kernel security and process isolation features such as selinux, namespaces, among others.
|
OS container |
Application container |
|
Data storage is stateful by default |
Data storage is stateless |
|
Less shareable |
More shareable since registry is its hub where container images are store. |
Conclusion
It therefore be concluded that there have been a great evolution of technology in supporting data centers as it can be seen in the discussions above. The two technologies, that is. Use of hypervisors and containers, all support the operations of the data center hence improving quality of services to the enterprise.
References
M. Bullock, “Data Center topics covering definition, objectives, systems and solutions.,” Data Center Definition and Solutions, pp. 1-3, 14 August 2009.
P. A. Networks, “WHAT IS A DATA CENTER? An Overview of Data Centers,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-a-data-center.
J. Hertvik, “Data Center Management Tools: Features, Functions, and How To Choose,” Data Center Management Tools: Features, Functions, and How To Choose, pp. 2-6, 20 December 2016.
J. Koomey, “Learn about the core principles of effective data center management,” Three Pillars of Modern Data Center Operations, pp. 2-4, 2 February 2016.
Zenlayer, “How are data center tiers classified and why are they important? What are data center tiers?,” pp. 1-6, 24 January 2017.
balt, “Tier Levels,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.balt.net/collocation/tier-levels/.
Cisco, “Data Center Architecture Overview,” 14 May 2008. [Online]. Available: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/DC_Infra2_5/DCInfra_1.html. [Accessed 24 Aigust 2018].
Z. Kerravala, “How a data center works [and how they’re changing] The future of data centers will rely on cloud, hyperconverged infrastructure and more powerful components,” Network World, pp. 1-8, 15 September 2017.
M. G. Sumastre, “Virtualization 101: What is a Hypervisor?,” pp. 2-4, 27 February 2013.
M. Rouse, “hypervisor,” This definition is part of our Essential Guide: Fine-tune your virtualization performance management skills, pp. 1-6, 2018.
K. Shaw, “What is a hypervisor? How separating software from hardware has given us virtualization and cloud computing,” Virtualization, pp. 1-10, 19 December 2017.
P. Rubens, “What are containers and why do you need them?,” pp. 1-7, 27 June 2017.
flow-ci, “https://medium.com/flow-ci/introduction-to-containers-concept-pros-and-cons-orchestration-docker-and-other-alternatives-9a2f1b61132c,” 29 September 2016. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/flow-ci/introduction-to-containers-concept-pros-and-cons-orchestration-docker-and-other-alternatives-9a2f1b61132c. [Accessed 24 August 2018].
M. Heusser, “30 essential container technology tools and resources,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://techbeacon.com/30-essential-container-technology-tools-resources. [Accessed 24 August 2018].
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download