Virtual Machines For Virtualization: Role, Importance, And Key Attributes

The Role of Virtualization in Data Center

Discuss about the Virtual Machines for Virtualization.

Virtualization is a very important part of the computer technology that has evolved in recent years. It has evolved into the most efficient form of storage of data.

This report consists of the description of different features of the virtualization.The report contains information about the role and importance of the virtualization and also information about the virtual appliances and the vApp.

• Firstly, it provides disaster recovery in the data centers (Khajehei, 2014). The data that are lost due to some system failure or even due to some external effects can be recovered very easily via virtualization. The data that is back up on the cloud is available throughout the cloud and can be back up at any time.
• Secondly, the virtualization technique provides hardware independence to the data centers. Usually earlier huge storage spaces were required in the machines to store large amounts of data. But, with virtualization a large amount of data can be stored in the clouds virtually. This would decrease the amount of hardware that would be required for storing the data. Sometimes even no hardware would be required. Since, all the data can be stored in the virtual memories.

Firstly, the virtualization process is very easy to implement (Thakral & Kadam, 2014). It just requires the user to register on the cloud and hire a storage space for themselves in which they can store all their data very easily. In addition to this the user does not require to upgrade any of the system or soft wares. Hence the up gradation is also very for the user.

Secondly, the virtualization method is very cost effective. The cost of a hard ware device is very high in today’s world. And the price increase with the need requirement of more space by the user. But, it is very cheap for the user to purchase a virtual space on the cloud. Hence, this provides the cost effectiveness for the user.

Thirdly, the system is very fast. The virtualization allows the users to upload and download the data very easily. In addition to this upload and the download processes are very fast depending upon the speed of the network. The safety of the data of the user is also provided very efficiently for the user.

The IBM cloud data virtualization is the organization that has implemented this technology successfully (Zheng,Wang & Wang, 2014). The IBM data centers are online. So, the data import and export of the company takes place online. The company also provides this facility to the users and other companies. The company also provides their visualization tool for purposes other than storage facilities. They also provide storage facilities to the private user free of cost up to a certain level.

• Simple to install and configure: The installation and the configuration procedures of the virtual machine are very simple (Peng et al., 2015). The installation tools for the virtual machine are easily available on the internet. In addition to this the configuration processes are also available very easily on the internet. For the configuration process the machines are to integrated with the APIS that are easily available in the VMware vSphere and the vCenter Server. In addition to the configuration procedure the backup and the restore process are also very easy to implement.
• VMware certified: The Virtual Machines are certified by the VMware certification. Hence, the systems are very reliable and authentic. The VMware vSphere contains the data protection APIs that are very efficient. In addition to this the APIs are updated automatically s soon as they are released.
• Application Aware: The Virtual Machines are very aware of the application that they are required to run. They automatically develop the require applications and also update them when require, the backup processes are not hampered.
• Scalable and efficient: The Virtual Machine are very efficient in providing backup. The backup software have to evolve so the IT efficiency is increased. IN addition to this the system are easily scalable. It provides the users the option of scalability. So, that they can increase or decrease their requirements very easily.
• Affordable: The Virtual Machines are very affordable. The cost of the Virtual Machine are very less in comparison to the various types of hardware components. So, they can be considered as very cheap and affordable of the users and also the organizations.

Many of the Organizations that provide the virtual machines as a service provide the server option of the Virtual machines (Gao et al., 2013). The main that is to be considered while adopting the virtual machine as the server is the nature of the system. It is to be identified weather the system is a fully virtual system or it is partially virtual or the operating system of the system is virtual. In the fully virtual system the VM as a server is to be used. In the partially virtual system the proportion of the virtual system and the hardware components are to be considered. And in the Software virtualization the virtual server should not be used. This is because of the system is composed of the hardware components.

The Importance of Virtualization

The virtual appliances are the virtual machine that are already configured, and can readily run on the hypervisors (Kecskemeti et al., 2014). It is basically derives from the software appliances. Basically, if a virtual software appliance is installed in the on the virtual machine it could be termed as the virtual appliance. The virtual appliance is the imaging instance of the software appliance that is installed into the virtual machine.

The vApp is the container and it can contain one or more than one virtual machines in them (Bigelow, 2014). They are like the resource pool. They also share functionalities of the virtual machines. The main features of the vApp are that they can easily be power on and offed and can also be cloned very easily.

The vApps can be run on only the hypervisor environment, while the virtual appliance can run on all the environments such as hypervisor as well as the hosted environments.

On several occasions the machines are slowed down if dual boot is performed on the machine (Chih-Liang et al., 2015). Hence, the virtual appliance can be used for dual booting the system. It would provide a virtual instance of a system on the machine. This would result in increased efficiency of the system. The virtual appliances [provide the user the opportunity to use multiple instances of different systems without having to boot the systems into their machines. This would allow the user to switching between different operating system without reducing the efficiency of the system. In addition to this, the users that require a particular software for only a limited period of time can use the virtual appliances do that they would not require to install the software into their machine. This would be saving the space on their machine and would also save the cost of buying the application.

IBM, Flexera Software and Fortinet.The IBM Partner World provides the virtual appliance of various sectors (Kandan et al., 2014). They provide the services in the fields of storage as well as the different other services. They are one of the main providers of the virtual appliances as a service. The Flexera Software provides the virtual appliances that can help in the business sectors. They perform the software licensing facilities and the entitlement management solutions. The Fortinet provides the security oriented virtual appliances. They are basically, concerned with the development of the firewall services. They provide the security of the application with their virtual appliances.

Conclusion

For conclusion, it can be said that the features of virtualization has been described very aptly in this report. The role and importance of virtualization has been successfully demonstrated in this report. In addition to this the virtualization as a server can also be used. In addition to this, the virtual appliances and vApp and the difference in between them have also been described in the report.

References

Bigelow, S. J. (2014). How can an enterprise benefit from using a VMware vApp?.

Chih-Liang, H. S. U., CHENG, W. L., & HUANG, Y. C. (2015). U.S. Patent Application No. 14/825,864.

Gao, Y., Guan, H., Qi, Z., Hou, Y., & Liu, L. (2013). A multi-objective ant colony system algorithm for virtual machine placement in cloud computing. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 79(8), 1230-1242.

Kandan, R., Alli, M. Z., & Ong, H. (2014, January). DiAF: A Dynamic virtual Appliance provision and management Framework for cloud Computing. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Grid Computing and Applications (GCA) (p. 1). The Steering Committee of The World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp).

Kecskemeti, G., Terstyanszky, G., Kacsuk, P., & Nemeth, Z. (2014). Towards efficient virtual appliance delivery with minimal manageable virtual appliances. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 7(2), 279-292.

Khajehei, K. (2014). Role of virtualization in cloud computing. International Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies, 2(4).

Peng, Z., Xu, B., Gates, A. M., Cui, D., & Lin, W. (2015). The Deasibility and Properties of Dividing Virtual Machine Resources using the Virtual Machine Cluster as the Unit in Cloud Computing. TIIS, 9(7), 2649-2666.

Thakral, M. A., & Kadam, S. A. (2014). Effective use of Virtualization in Computer Laboratory Management. In National Conference on Innovations in IT and Management. Pune, Maharashtra, India.

Zheng, K., Wang, X., Li, L., & Wang, X. (2014, April). Joint power optimization of data center network and servers with correlation analysis. In INFOCOM, 2014 Proceedings IEEE (pp. 2598-2606). IEEE.