What is Virtualization?

 in Virtualization  tagged use of virtual machine / virtual machine / virtualbox / virtualization / vmware by (updated 2753 days ago)

Virtualization is a very vast topic, this is just a brief introduction. Basics that you should know about Virtualization.

So what is Virtualization?  Well, Virtualization can be categorized in two ways:
– One the most basic way in which you create an Operating System virtually on an existing machine. That is, it looks like a machine for you, but actually, it isn’t present there as you think it is. You actually can run more than one Operating System on your base machine, without deleting any data. You would be running these Operating System on your machine, but the Processor will treat it as a New Operating System which was recently installed.
– The second one being the advanced way, where you have virtual machines with the same configuration of a server to give users almost 100% uptime. If one server fails, it automatically migrates data into another one (provided all the virtual machines share common configuration) and brings it up, thus reducing the downtime.

In this post we’ll talk mainly about the first case, as in a virtual machine on existing, just to get you acquainted with the idea of virtualization.

We will consider Hypervisor as the base machine, on which we do our daily activities and Virtual Machine as the Guest OS that we will install.
However, there are few Hypervisors which are built to take care of multiple Virtual Machines, like Citrix Xen or Microsoft Hyper-V.

Virtualization is on the rise today! Big industries are taking Virtualization seriously! It helps them cut down their hardware cost and provides many more features.

We can create Virtual Operating Systems using two Softwares:

  1. VMware Workstation.
  2. Oracle Virtual Box.

So why use Virtual Machine? Well, if you need to install a new Operating System say any Linux Operating System on your base machine which says Windows 7, then you will have to follow these steps:

  1. Restart and Boot from the CD.
  2. Create a Partition in your Hard disk of say 20GB-30GB.
  3. Install Operating System on that Partition.
  4. And then use that Operating System.

Well, you can do this. But what if you need to use Windows 7 again. So you’ll then:

  1. Shutdown that Operating System.
  2. Restart your PC.
  3. Select Windows 7 and continue with your work.

Everytime you want to switch between your OS, you’ll have to do this repeatedly, and it is a boring process. So, Virtualization will help you.

You can build your own Virtual Machine using VMware or VirtualBox.

Advantages of Virtualization.

When you go for Virtualization, you can

  1. Use the same hardware and run multiple Operating Systems simultaneously. You can check 3 Operating Systems working at the same time (Windows 8, RedHat 6.1, CentOS 6.0)!
    Redhat On vmware

    Redhat On VMware

    CentOS on vmware

    CentOS on VMware

     

  2. No need to create a Different partition. OS files would be installed in a folder in the drive you specify. In the image below, you can see the Virtual Machine’s filesare stored in Disk used by Windows only.

    vm files

    Files of Virtual Machine

  3. No need to install same Operating System on other machines. Just copy the Virtual hard disk file (shown in the above image) and paste it on other machines.
    Your Operating System would be up and running in no time.
  4. Take a backup of the Virtual Hard disk file after installation. If things get messy or go wrong and OS doesn’t work, just replace the backup file, and a brand new OS would be there in front of you.
  5. Switch back between Operating Systems in real-time without a reboot. All the Operating Systems would be up at the same time. You can switch between them at any time.
  6. Add and configure Network cards, RAM, Processor, the Hard disk of that Operating System.
    • You can give it 2 LAN cards, one connected to the internet, one for Internal Network.
    • If you’re installing XP, you can assign 512MB RAM or 1GB RAM.
    • You can assign a number of processors for that Operating System.
    • You can give the Hard disk size of that Operating System. It would be Dynamically allocated. That is, if you give 100GB, it won’t keep 100GB aside for itself. If it has files of 1GB , it will use 1GB of the allocated 100GB.

These are just some few advantages of Virtualization. When you’ll use it, you’ll be amazed to see, what all you can do with a Virtual Machine. So go for Virtualization. Try it, its easy and fun.

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