Abstract
Cloud Computing and Virtualization is a revolution in the IT world that has enable faster delivery of application and data to clients. In five pages I should be able to describe how much difference Cloud Computing and Virtualization has brought and how it has been done.
Keywords: IT-Information technology, SAN- Storage Area Network,
Cloud computing and virtualization has quickly become the most popular and used IT technology. VMware today has over 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners. So, what is this about Cloud computing and virtualization that makes it so popular?
Various technologies come with their hardware that is physical in nature. When you have virtualized them, it means that you have created a virtual version of something. This process enables you to do more by sort of detaching itself from the hardware.
While cloud computing is like virtualization in advantages, it able to do more for the user because data and applications are manage on several hardware devices and provide only the needed space at any given time.
Let us have a deeper look into virtualization. Prior to virtualization, technologies run on one operating system image per machine. The software and the hardware work dependently because they are tightly coupled. Because only one machine is used, conflict often arises because of use of the same machine. These non-virtualized machines normally have underutilized resources and very expensive and rigid.
Unlike in the traditional server concept, the virtual server concept, the hardware and the software such as the OS and applications are not dependent of each other. When one uses virtual machines, the machine can be supported to any system. Finally, it enables the user manage the OS and application as one unit.
There are specific advantages about virtualization. With virtualization, the server has less to worry about on matters cost. Since the hardware in this case is not committed to one big single purpose but rather working specific entity at any given time, it saves the cost. It also reduces cost by lesser use of power and cooling, it is able to use more servers, server management is simpler and more comprehensive and minimal downtime. It simplifies management by streamlining the way physical and virtual systems are managed hence enabling product evaluation. The technologies hardware is much more portable. The server is made more effective and secure. Provision times are decreased. When failures occur, it moves quickly thereby improving security. Virtualization is very useful in aiding development of software. The same also aids in quality assurance. It facilities training by reducing the cost of training. Owing to the fact that it can support a lot of software, it increases the usage of hardware. It also enables consolidation capabilities such as virtualization and scaling of sockets. It also provides an end-to-end platform. Virtualization enables integration by automation, management of consolidation, quick access to native virtualization management tools, track alerts and systems and finally perform lifecycle management tasks.
Virtualization has also proved to be very effective in storage consolidation. Storage Area Networks used by servers are connected to storage by SAN-attached storage. With SAN, information resources can be spread over various locations and storage environments with products from different vendors and though on a lesser scale, also allow sharing of similar storage resources across the enterprise. The main characteristics for SAN include a centralized management, storage protocols, private networks for storage and remote shared storage access.
Server, storage and network consolidation allows for a lot less power whips, network cables, racks and servers with SAN and NAS. Virtualization is very useful economically as it reduces cost caused by downtime. It also reduces the costs of datacenter operation and physical infrastructure.
Virtualization has several disadvantages. It does not do well for testing performance, specific hardware requirements, hardware compatibility testing and applications that are resource intensive. It is impossible to virtualize clocks, time and real time behavior, certain registers and unusual devices and device control. Generally, data centre and desktop computing using virtualization improve security; increase the use of capacity while computing, managing complexity and parallelism and finally in equaling the computing load.
Now a deeper look into cloud computing. The need for IT for businesses is ever growing and the demand is therefore becoming ever greater. Even more than can be borne. 85% of computing capacity is not in use in the various computing environments. 70% of the IT earned income is used in maintaining the present IT physical infrastructure and the remaining budget spent on improved IT. And in case of failure to secure IT and there arises an incidence such as hacking, 30% of the consumers will end their association the company if it had anything to do with the failure to secure the network. Still, it is difficult to change this technology and as seen even more so to maintain. It can therefore be concluded that it’s true that the resources are dwindling as the businesses expand. Those businesses with an effective IT are increasingly rewarded. That is why many of these companies are turning to cloud computing since it is efficient, flexible and cost-effective.
Cloud computing offers a certain range of solutions that is the spectrum. There are five main ones. The first is infrastructure as a service. In this case the client is provided with hardware or a virtual computer where the OS is independent of the hardware. It also provides a platform as a service used by developers and software as a service. Finally it also provides storage and desktop as a service.
Cloud computing has various advantages. Software and storage as a service minimize cost by minimizing operational cost and eliminating the maintenance of software and licensing of the same as well as cost of infrastructure. In cloud computing, building and switching to a new software takes a shorter time. The software demands can be split and shared among different specialist such as management and software support to one and internal IT to another.
Platform services also service minimize cost by minimizing operational cost and eliminating the maintenance of software and licensing of the same as well as cost of infrastructure. Platform as a service also minimizes cost for hosting and test environments. With the platform spectrum, developers can work together and eases the management of software projects. This service allows for ease of integration of services. Finally, it shortens the time for development of software and delivery.
Infrastructure as a service has the following advantages. It reduces cost in two ways; one is by shifting the scale needed resources as per the requirements. Secondly, by requiring less man power, organizations can cut cost since less capital expenditure is required on infrastructure, operational cost, maintenance and administration. The vendors have a lesser risk of being locked in because infrastructure as service can support many types of operating systems and frameworks. Provisioning new infrastructure is very fast.
Cloud computing has several barriers. It is said to be of concern on matters quality. These are performance, availability and reliability. Cloud computing is just as vulnerable to security breaches as other traditional data center and network. It is supposed to have an even higher risk because of exchange of information and because the security rather than internally is handled externally. Also because of poor access to applications hosted in the cloud, very little information on the physical location of stored data, use by many tenant platforms and finally this concept is not yet mature enough to by an underlying technology. Finally, it has been difficult come up with appropriate compliance to governance and compliance. This is in line with favorable models for the cloud services and privacy.
In line with cloud computing and virtualization, there are various technologies that have been developed. To mention a few, there is VMware. In 2001, VMware released ESX AND GSX 1.0. It later released a virtual center in 2003. Among the various IT technologies in cloud computing and virtualization, this is the most experienced which make is the most mature and most developed. It concentrates on automation of the IT process integration around virtualization. One can manage this virtualization using vCenter. It uses high availability and fault tolerance to make applications available and finally one can optimize resources using optimization. The other is Citrix. It is a server that focuses on client virtualization with a low cost server virtualization solution. Acquired on August 15th, 2007 Xensource is now part of Citrix Xenserver. A final example is Microsoft. It has released two version of the virtualization that includes Standalone version and Real solution in October 2008 and August 2009 respectively.
With VMware, the client is guaranteed a freedom of choice. It does this by enabling you keep your present OS and application. With any vCloud service provider one set the OS or application internally or externally. IT services are effectively delivered on an affordable, optimized, self-managed and ever changing environment. This process enables efficiency through utilization and automation. VMware gives you the capability that enables you diminish business and regulatory risk and quicker response to business needs.
References
http://www.ieee.li/pdf/viewgraphs/introduction_to_virtualization.pdf
http://www. vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/Gartner-VMware-Magic-Quadrant.pdf
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmware-cloud-computing-BR-EN.pdf
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