Table of Contents1. Introduction.................................................................................................................2

2. How It Works...............................................................................................................3

3. Types of Hypervisor....................................................................................................4

4. Challenges responsible for Growth of Virtualization..................................................5

5. Classification of Virtualization....................................................................................6

6. Industry Players...........................................................................................................8

7. Managerial Implications..............................................................................................9

8. Virtualization Software Offerings.............................................................................12

9. References.................................................................................................................13

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Traditional System versus Virtualized system.......................................................3Figure 2: A Virtual Machine..................................................................................................4Figure 3: Virtual Infrastructure..............................................................................................4Figure 4: Issues with IT environment....................................................................................6Figure 5: Types of Virtualization...........................................................................................7Figure 6: Desktop Virtualization...........................................................................................8Figure 7: Gartner Magic Quadrant........................................................................................9Figure 8: Condensed Image of Processor Manager.............................................................10Figure 9: Virtualization Software License issue..................................................................12Figure 10: Virtualization software offerings........................................................................13

1. Introduction

Virtualization is one of the sultriest themes for business administrators and also ITsupervisors with profits like expanded productivity, expanded resource optimization, all themore computing power and so forth. It is an innovation arrangement that addresses variousbusiness drivers, essentially cost savings, which influence pretty much all commercialventures. However, what precisely is the technology all about?

Virtualization is innovation for supporting execution of PC system code, from applications toentire OS in a software present environment. As a result such a type of Virtual Machine (VM)environment digests accessible framework assets (memory, storage, CPU core(s), I/O, and soforth.) and presents them in a consistent manner, such that "guest" software can't recognizeVM-built execution from running with respect to bare physical hardware. It is astructure/approach of asset allotment between various execution situations by utilizingmethods like time/resource sharing, simulation/emulation and so forth.

A virtual machine (VM) provides a software environment that allows software to run on baremetal. Such an environment is known as a hypervisor. It is isolated and very efficient replicaof real OS. The hypervisor has functionality that looks like hardware to the “guest” operatingsystem. It allows multiple operating system instances to run concurrently on a singlecomputer; it is a means of separating hardware from a single operating system. CPU,processors, storage and memory are shared and it also has provision for desktop migration.

Figure 1: Traditional System versus Virtualized system

2. How It Works

Virtualization platform transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an x86-basedcomputer—including the CPUs, network controllers, PCI slots, hard disks —to create a fullyfunctional virtual machine as shown in figure 1 that can run its own operating system andapplications just like a “real” computer. Each virtual machine (Figure 2) contains a completesystem, eliminating potential conflicts. A layer of software directly is placed between thecomputer hardware and OS of the host. Various resources of the server are dynamicallyallocated. Thus multiple OS can successfully run on a physical hardware. The hypervisor hasprovision for making sure that the compatibility between the device drivers with the softwareis maintained. Thus fully functional multiple OS sharing underlying single physical resourceis possible using virtualization.

Virtualization also helps the IT company share physical resources across entire infrastructure.This property ascertains maximum efficiency. There is also a provision for applicationsharing thus reducing the licensing cost hence facilitating greater flexibility in theorganization and results in lower capital and operational costs.

A virtual infrastructure as shown in Figure 3 consists of the following components:

i. Bare-metal hypervisors to enable full virtualization of each x86 computer.

ii. Virtual infrastructure services such as resource management and consolidated backup tooptimize available resources among virtual machines

Figure 2: A Virtual Machine

Figure 3: Virtual Infrastructure

Type 1Bare-Metal

Type 2Hosted

3. Types of Hypervisor

Type 2 hypervisors don't perform as well as the type 1 hypervisors and that's because thatoperating system layer is in between the virtualization layer and the physical hardware sothere's greater overhead in using type-2 hypervisors which really means you can’t get asmany virtual machines on the same piece of hardware and another way of saying that is thatthe consolidation ratio with type 2 hypervisors is much lower than the consolidation ratiowith type 1 hypervisors so in other words you can't get as many virtual machines on the samepiece of hardware if you use a type 2 hypervisor as you can with type 1 hypervisor.

So Type 1s are to be used in the data center. That's where you have a dedicated physicalserver. You load these virtualization products or these hypervisors on that server and then youconsolidate as many physical servers as virtual machines onto those virtual hosts using thetype 1 hypervisor that's because you're going to get the best performance with those type 1hypervisors.

On the other hand, Type 2 hypervisors are still very useful because if you just want to runa couple of virtual machines let’s say on your laptop or your desktop PC the type 2hypervisor is the way to go. You could run in exchange for a machine or a web server or aLinux experts machine inside Windows using these type 2 hypervisors so there's tremendousbenefits in the type 2 hypervisor. But it's meant for a desktop or a laptop system that alreadyhas an operating system, you already have applications may be your email your webbrowsing, your Microsoft Office applications. They can all be loaded along with the type 2hypervisor that's going to give you access to run more virtual machines.

4. Challenges responsible for Growth of Virtualization

On average, applications use a modest percentage of computing resources available to iton the host machine. The table below gives resource consumption for a set of commonapplications

Table 1: Resource Utilization with some common set of Applications

Thus there are a variety of challenges in the IT environment today that give rise to thevirtualization technology.

Figure 4: Issues with IT environment

A. Low Infrastructure Utilization

Typical x86 server deployments achieve an average utilization of only 10% to 15% of totalcapacity. Organizations do this to avoid any risk arising out of simultaneous running ofcontradicting apps on single system. However, this leads to wastage of lots of computingpower and thus leads to requirement of more servers.

B. Increasing Physical Infrastructure Costs

Virtualization

Server Virtualization Application VirtualizationResource VirtualizationDesktop Virtualization

The operational expenditure to support growing physical infrastructure have steadilyincreased. This has given impetus to the concept of BYOD i.e. Bring your own device. Toenable business continuity on all such devices is only adding up to the already increasingcosts.

C. Increasing IT management Costs

More infrastructure means more support staff to carry on manual tasks associated with servermaintenance. Hiring costs and salaries also add up to the bill.

D. Insufficient Failover and Disaster Protection

Business critical applications can’t afford to be down. Each downtime costs companythousands of dollars in revenue and probable loss of clients. These downtimes are increasingwith the rise in security attacks and terrorism.

E. High Maintenance End-User Desktops

Overseeing and securing enterprise desktops present various difficulties. Controlling a distributed desktop environment and authorizing administration, access and security approaches without impeding clients' capacity to work viably is mind boggling and lavish.

5. Classification of Virtualization

A. Server Virtualization

It is the most common type of virtualization. In this type, we create virtual servers over asingle physical host server using hypervisor software to optimize computing power of thephysical server and reduce wastage.

B. Desktop Virtualization

The remote manipulation of a computer desktop is called desktop virtualization. For example,here you can see three racks of servers. On top of these servers, you load VMware vSphere as

Figure 5: Types of Virtualization

a hypervisor. Then on one of the server, you load VMware View Manager. This acts as a connection broker where all kind of devices connect. End users connect to their virtual machines using the view manager.

Figure 6: Desktop Virtualization

Drivers for desktop virtualization

Source: Entperprise and SMB Hardware Survey, North America and Europe, Forrester Research

C. Resource Virtualization

The virtualization of system resources is known as resource virtualization.

Storage Virtualization: pooling of multiple physical storage resources into a

single storage resource that is centrally managed. Storage virtualization is commonly used in file systems, storage area networks (SANs), switches and virtualtape systems. Users can implement storage virtualization with software, hybrid hardware or software appliances.

Network Virtualization: process of combining hardware and software network

resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network.

D. Application Virtualization

The hosting of individual application on alien hardware/software is called application virtualization. For example, a program like Microsoft Word executes on a server located in the data center, but the graphical output is displayed on a remote client device. The end-user is able to interact with it via keyboard and mouse. Types include:

Portable application

Cross-platform virtualization

Emulation or Simulation

6. Industry Players

Gartner magic quadrant is a tool for understanding the relative position of various marketplayers in an industry. Companies are measured on two broad capabilities i.e ability toexecute and completeness of vision and accordingly they are classified under four categoriesnamely:

Figure 7: Gartner Magic Quadrant

From the magic quadrant it is quite clear that

After VMwareBefore VMware

Challengers: These players have ability to execute but lack on completeness of vision

parameter. Oracle with its application driven virtualization falls into challenger’scategory. Oracle products have high degree of reliability, high availability/disasterrecovery feature and support to openstack.

Leaders: They have perfect strategy and roadmap of their product offering, they also

have clear formulation high growth technologies such as cloud(private/hybrid/public). VMware and Microsoft are clear market leaders, scoring veryhighly on parameters such as viability, pricing, customer experience and operation.VMware in 2013 introduced vSphere 5.5, virtual SAN, storage VMotion, ServerCaching etc. with increased focus on end user computing. Microsoft with its enhanceversion of Hyper-V has grown by manifolds in virtualization space. Microsoft has avery advantageous position as it can be released as a package with Windows server2012.

Visionaries: These players typically have differentiated approach or technological

prowess but lack in execution front. In virtualization industry, none of the companyfalls into this category.

Niche Players: These players have focused on very specific product niches and have

not capitalized on their entire market yet. Parallels, Citrix, Red Hat and Huawei fallunder this category. Red Hat is used in Linux cluster and open stack implementations,Parallels is used in high-density deployments, Citrix with Xen server and Huawei areused in desktop virtualization.

7. Managerial Implications

This research was done in the college laboratory consisting of 20 computers. Thecomputers were having only one OS installed in them earlier. Using virtualization techniques,3-4 OS were installed on each of them. A study was made on the condensed picture ofprocessor performance of each computer and then the average picture was made from thedata available which is shown in the Figure 3 below.

Figure 8: Condensed Image of Processor Manager

As it is visible here, that the performance of processor manager increases and thus themachines become more efficient. This clearly proves that virtualization results in betterperformance and efficiency.

Likewise, here’s a data which shows the cost impact of virtualization on one of VMware’sclients.

Thus, broadly we have following benefits of virtualization:

a. Cost Efficiency: Lower hardware spending due to accelerated server consolidationand increased server utilization rates.

b. Scalability/Agility: Lesser dependence on hardware and quick response to changingcustomer demand enables enterprise to be more agile and scale up the business.

c. Business Continuity: Easier software migration leading to better disaster recoverymechanisms, thus keeping business online 24X7

d. High Availability: Like above point, better disaster recovery mechanisms providelesser downtime and hence high availability to serve customers

e. Security: Centralized and consolidated control gives access to versionupdates/patches from the centralized system only, thus keeping all systems up to dateand less prone to security threats.

However, there are a number of risks that companies have to mitigate while theytry to achieve above benefits by using virtualization. For example, as per a report KeyTrends in Software Pricing & Licensing Survey 2013-14, 85% of organizations werefound to be out of compliance with their software license agreements due to use of the

software in virtualized environments. Below infographic gives a concise picture of theproblem.

There is also an increasing risk of security that is associated with virtualization much like

cloud computing. There is a loss of network visibility inside the virtualization systems.Classical network tools can't regulate the traffic between guests. This makes it difficult fornetwork security teams to comprehensively monitor for malicious or inappropriate trafficflows. To improve security in virtualized environments, following recommendations shouldbe implemented by organizations:

Up-to-date hypervisors to mitigate security threats. Even bare metal hypervisorsrequire physical security.

Maintain security for each component, from hypervisor and host OS to guest OS,storage and applications.

Restrict and protect administrator access to the virtualization solution

Carefully plan security for a virtualization solution before installing, configuringand deploying it

Figure 9: Virtualization Software License issue

8. Virtualization Software Offerings

Figure 10: Virtualization software offerings

9. References

i. VMware. Capacity Planner.

http://www.vmware.com/products/capacity-planner/ii. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/academic/vmware-academic-isca126-

soundararajan-wp.pdfiii. 2013-14 Key Trends in Software Pricing & Licensing Survey:

http://resources.flexerasoftware.com/iv. http://fcw.com/microsites/2011/data-center-optimization/agencies-address-security-

concerns.aspxv. F. Hao, T.V. Lakshman "Enhancing Dynamic Cloud-based Services Using Network

Virtualization”vi. Dr. Rao Mikkilineni & Vijay Sarathy, “Cloud Computing and Lessons from the Past,”

Kawa Objects, Inc.vii. Virtualization: From the Desktop to the Enterprise, Chris Wolf, Erick M. Halter.

viii. http://www.virtualizationadmin.comix. http://www.virtualization.orgx. Norbert Skubch, Roland Klausnitzer (2012). Trends in Virtualization and their

Implications