What is Virtualization?
In short Virtualization is a method of running multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware. The two primary uses are server virtualization and desktop virtualization.
What does it solve?
Primarily Virtualization can help solve IT issues such as hardware underutilization, high operational support costs, energy consumption and air conditioning costs from a growing physical IT infrastructures in a generally declining IT budget environment.
How does it work?
Virtualization software sits between the physical hardware and the operating system. The software partitions the physical hardware into multiple virtual machines, each with their own processing power, memory, networking, storage and BIOS, enabling multiple OS’s (and their associated applications) to run in these virtual environments side by side on the same physical hardware. In a practical sense, virtualization would allow a company to consolidate 3 servers into 1 i.e. running a Windows virtual machine, a Linux virtual machine and a Unix virtual machine on a single server.
What are the benefits?
Sharing the computing resources of a server among virtual machines can dramatically increase its utilization, which can enable a company or Data Centre to reduce the number of physical servers and other hardware devices it uses. This in turn helps to reduce further investment in hardware and build time. Other potential cost savings include lower energy costs as well a lower IT staffing and administrating costs. Benefits beyond cost saving of virtualization include improved ability and security of IT environments and reduced space requirements in data centers. With virtualization, an OS and its applications are no longer dependent on a particular physical server which brings benefits in improved up time and availability.