Virtualization And Cloud Computing For Various Technologies

Benefits of Virtualization in Data Centers

Discuss about the Virtualization and Cloud Computing for Various Technologies.

Firms in different fields can harness and take advantage of virtualization and its various technologies and models to improve efficiency and lower costs while also achieving economies of scale.  Virtual entails the creation of a virtual version of something, rather than have an actual thing, for instance, a virtual computer, a virtual server, a virtual network, and a virtual operating system. However, to fully benefit from the benefits that virtualization offers, it is imperative to have an understanding of virtualization and its various models, applications, and services, especially for firms whose IT knowledge is limited. An example is the case of  ACL Realty, a real estate firm which runs a small data center with old physical servers that need to be retired. Instead of purchasing new servers, there is the possibility of using virtualization, which has several benefits, including saving costs, time and energy as well as reducing th headache of managing desktop and other hardware management. This paper discusses and explains some relevant terms and technologies related to virtualization that will greatly enhance ACL Realty.

Virtualization is important for a data center because it enables consolidation; where there can be ten virtual machines for every physical machine. This implies that a single machine can run ten server applications that would otherwise require ten physical machines, optimizing the utilization of servers significantly. With such a setup, the data center foot print is reduced because the same physical space and only marginally higher energy resources are consumed, resulting in increased productivity. Virtualization also plays the role of disaster recovery and load balancing within a data center; since workloads for servers vary, virtualization makes it possible for virtual machines over utilizing server resources to be transferred, in real time, to servers that are under-utilized resulting in efficient server utilization (Christensen, 2012). Virtualization also ensures improved security and system reliability as it prevents system crashes such as due to corruption of memories due to software applications like device drivers. System devices are better controlled through virtualization technology for directed input/ output devices architecture; the DMA (dynamic memory addressing) architecture is defined and interrupts re-mapped resulting in better input/ output devices isolation. The result is greater security, reliability, and availability (Burger, 2012)

Virtualization should be a major component of every organization’s IT strategy since it plays a very important role in the data center environment. Virtualization enables fast re-deployment, which can occur within minutes because it is always ready, has a ready server image, and has the most current copy of the data center physical servers. It helps lower data center costs, given that hardware is the biggest cost center for a data center; further, it enables significant energy savings due to less heat buildup in the data center. Virtualization allows for easier backups of the virtual server while also allowing for taking virtual machines snapshots. Virtualization enables better disaster recovery because up to date virtual machine snapshots are available; this allows a data center to get back and running in no time. Virtualization eliminates the need for vendor lock-in because there is abstraction between the hardware and software as the virtual machines are not specific hardware dependent. Migration to the cloud with virtualization is also easy and enables better testing (Geng, 2015)

Efficient VM Usage

Data centers no doubt has benefits that have been experienced in real life; The Motley Fool, an on-line financial services company faced the challenge of overcrowding in its data centers having used all the available space in its data center to meet increasing consumer demand. Among the adverse effects included overheating and increased energy consumption, and a severely hampered capability to offer more computing capability for their work. The company solved the problem using virtualization and reaped several benefits, among them fast deployment, reduced power consumption and air conditioning needs, higher capacity through adding more virtual machines, and the ability to run multiple applications in fewer servers, greatly reducing the time between requests and IT response (‘International Computers,’ 2017), (Baghel, 2017)

Efficient VM’s must not use too much space when applications are installed in them; this requires turning off some functionalities in operating systems, such as system protection in windows 7, install software form locations other than on the virtual machines, and avoid taking VM snapshots during installation. The VM new images should be in multiple pieces of 2 GB and virtual drive space should not be pre allocated (Hardy, 2014).  Efficient VM’s use virtual appliances as they allow quick spinning of a full blown server with a specific utilization in mind; such appliances include group ware servers and production ready CMS.  When being used on a network, the networking should be set to bridged mode for each VM and this is only possible manually. The VM should have sufficient memory on the host in order to run efficiently in such a way that the host and guest machines have sufficient memory to run properly.  To roll back a VM, snapshots should be used to take it to a previous state.

The first step requires that the VM is shut down and the VM should then be shared and then a location for the shared VM is chosen from the available options. The VM should then be set to auto start as this is a key function of any physical server; it must detect that power is back and then automatically turn on (Al-Dabbas, 2012). When using VMWare and/ or VirtualBox, VMs are created with the NAT by default, running a server in a VM requires that the network type (NAT) is either changed or the ports forwarded via the virtual NAT. In the NAT network type, network address translation is done by the host OS (operating system) so the host computers’ address is shared with the VM and so the VM will not receive incoming traffic. The solution is using an abridged network mode which makes the VM appear as a separate machine within the network and have its own address. Standard procedures such as ensuring sufficient memory (RAM) and partitioning are standard before using a VM as a server. The network type for any VM can be changed by right clicking the machine and choosing ‘settings’; the changes can be made only after powering off the VM 

Changing Network Types and Virtual Appliances

A virtual appliance refers to a pre-configured VM image that is ready to be run on the hypervisor. A virtual appliance is a subset of the broader appliances class of software. The VM has a preconfigured operating system environment plus a single application created to make it easy for an application to be delivered and operated. A vApp, on the other hand, refers to a container resource pool in which one or more VM’s can be contained. The vApp shares some forms of functionality with VMs such as being able to power off and on and can also be cloned, just like a VM. The vApp enables software to be used minus the complexity of doing the software installations since the software contained in the vApp have already been installed as well as configured and are now ready for use.  The software in the vApp are run by making use of the virtualization software, for instance, Oracle Virtual Box or VMWare Fusion

One can use virtual appliances to deploy network applications and to automate services; they are particularly useful when deploying services in a simple way that eliminates problems such as driver incompatibility. In grid computing, virtual appliances solve the problem of having a wide variety of diverse operating system and hardware configurations. By adding virtual appliances, very rapid grid notes provisioning is achieved; this decouples the grid operator cleanly from the grid consumer through encapsulation of all virtual appliance knowledge. This way, one can just just download a software and run it. Virtual appliances are also very useful in the software as a service model because it enables economies of scale to be achieved; this is also possible with the infrastructure as a service model of delivery. The virtual appliance makes the file format irrelevant to a cloud service user and for IaaS, it offers a direct route on premise applications to be redeployed rapidly

One of the main providers of vApp software is the SAS which provides the SAS University Edition, the other is VMWare vApp, and Xen vApp by Citrix. The SAS UE can have the software run using various platforms including Oracle VirtualBox and the VMWare Workstation player. The SAS UE can be run from or on cloud applications such as Amazon Cloud Services marketplace. The SAS VAPP contains various SAS software, including SAS studio, SAS/STAT, Base SAS, SAS IML and SAS/ ACCESS for transferring to PC files. In short, the SAS UE mostly contains proprietary SAS software applications, with the capability of transferring to PC file formats.  The VMWare vApp on the other hand is an open source vApp in which several software’s can be installed and run from; it allows multiple software’s to be run on it; it offers resource controls from inside the vApp while also providing for network configurations within it. The VMWare vApp enables high level portability and so everything within the container can be transferred to other virtual infrastructure.  The entire VMWare vApp can be cloned. The XenvApp is particularly useful for providers with both old and new software applications. It provides off-line capabilities that allows easy access to applications from anywhere and from any device (Kecskemeti, Kacsuk, Delaitre, & Terstyanszky, n.d.).

Conclusion

This paper explained some important core aspects of virtualization, including what the concept of virtualization is, when it should be used and how to use it, and its importance in a data center. It reduces energy use, lowers machine costs, reduces operating system costs, allows for easy back and redeployment, while also using a small physical space. With virtualization, virtual machines are used instead of physical machines and to ensure efficiency and constant operation, they should be configured properly. Used with virtual appliances and vApps, virtualization can greatly enhance the performance of the ACL Realty data center

References

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