Günther Gerlach

written by gunther gerlach-2009

I have talked about virtualization and also about Cloud Computing but, what options are available to implement cloud computing Infrastructure implementations? Well, that is simple!

Hardware technologies for virtualization (hypervisor)

Hypervisor Virtualization has a layer (usually a thin Linux kernel shown here as a hypervisor or standard OS) that is loaded directly on the bare server. To allocate hardware and resources to the virtual machines (VMs), all hardware on the server must be virtualized. The next layer up shows each chip, board, etc. that must be virtualized so that it can be assigned to the VMs. Once in the VM itself, there is a complete copy of an operating system and finally the application or workload.

OS Virtualization at the base resides a standard host operating system that includes Windows and Linux. Next is the virtualization layer with a proprietary file system and a kernel service abstraction layer that ensure isolation and security of resources between different containers. The virtualization layer makes each container appear as a standalone server. Finally, the container itself houses the application or workload.

HYPERVISOR VIRTUALIZATION is today the most used technique for virtualization used by the biggest players on the arena.

To better understand this topic, let’s first to define a few new acronyms in Cloud Computing and Virtualization:

Hypervisors: hypervisor, also called a virtual machine manager, is a program that allows multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host (server). Each operating system appears to have the host’s processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. However, the hypervisor is actually controlling the host processor and resources, allocating what are needed to each operating system in turn and making sure that the guest operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt each other.

virtual appliance: is a virtual machine image file consisting of a preconfigured operating system environment and a single application. The purpose of a virtual appliance is to simplify delivery and operation of the application. To this end, only necessary operating system components are included.

Virtual Machine: A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operating systems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own virtual hardware. Virtual machines are a fundamental building block of a much larger solution: the virtual infrastructure. While a virtual machine represents the hardware resources of an entire computer, a virtual infrastructure represents the interconnected hardware resources of an entire IT infrastructure.

Virtualization platforms:

Articles and information posted by Parallels

Gunther Gerlach