Review the following article in this week’s reading: What is Server Virtualization:

The Ultimate Guide. Select 2 of the main sections from the article:

Why is server virtualization important?

How does server virtualization work?

What are the benefits of server virtualization?

What are the disadvantages of server virtualization?

Use cases and applications

What are the types of server virtualization?

Migration and deployment best practices

Server virtualization management

Vendors and products

What's the future of server virtualization?

In a 2-3 page APA-formatted paper, summarize what you have learned from the 2
article sections about server virtualization that you selected to read. Present a
brief business use case scenario in which server virtualization would be
appropriate and address the pros and cons of deployment. give answer from this
in simple words so that I can later use ai bypasser to bypass ai content from it
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Introduction
Why is server virtualization important?
How does server virtualization work?
What are the benefits of server virtualization?
What are the disadvantages of server virtualization?
Use cases and applications
What are the types of server virtualization?
Migration and deployment best practices
Server virtualization management
Vendors and products
What's the future of server virtualization?
DEFINITION
What is server virtualization? The ultimate guide
By
Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor Alexander S. Gillis, Technical Writer
and Editor
Server virtualization is a process that creates and abstracts multiple virtual
instances on a single server. Server virtualization also abstracts or masks server
resources, including the number and identity of individual physical machines,
processors and different operating systems.

Traditional computer hardware and software designs typically supported single

applications. Often, this forced servers to each run a single workload, wasting
unused processors, memory capacity and other hardware resources such as network
bandwidth. Server hardware counts spiraled upward as organizations deployed more
applications and services across the enterprise. The corresponding costs and
increasing demands on space, power, cooling and connectivity pushed data centers to
their limits.

The advent of server virtualization changed all this. Virtualization adds a layer
of software, called a hypervisor, to a computer, which abstracts the underlying
hardware from all the software that runs above. Virtualization translates physical
resources into virtual -- logical -- equivalents. The hypervisor then organizes and
manages the computer's virtualized resources, provisioning those virtualized
resources into logical instances called virtual machines (VMs), each capable of
functioning as a separate and independent server.

The key here is resource utilization. Hypervisor-managed virtualization can create

and run multiple simultaneous VMs built from the computer's available resources.
Virtualization can enable one computer to do the work of multiple computers,
utilizing up to 100% of the server's available hardware to handle multiple
workloads simultaneously. This reduces server counts, eases the strain on data
center facilities, improves IT flexibility and lowers the cost of IT for the
enterprise.

Virtualization has changed the face of enterprise computing, but its many benefits
are sometimes tempered by factors such as licensing and management complexity, as
well as potential availability and downtime issues. Organizations must understand
what virtualization is, how it works, its tradeoffs and use cases. Only then can an
organization adopt and deploy virtualization effectively across the data center.

Why is server virtualization important?

To appreciate the role of virtualization in the modern enterprise, consider a bit

of IT history.

Virtualization isn't a new idea. The technology first appeared in the 1960s during
the early era of computer mainframes as a means of supporting mainframe time-
sharing, which divides the mainframe's considerable hardware resources to run
multiple workloads simultaneously. Virtualization was an ideal and essential fit
for mainframes because the substantial cost and complexity of mainframes limited
them to just one deployed system -- organizations had to get the most utilization
from the investment.

The advent of x86 computing architectures brought readily available, simple, low-
cost computing devices into the 1980s. Organizations moved away from mainframes and
embraced individual computer systems to host or serve each enterprise application
to growing numbers of user or client endpoint computers. Because individual x86-
type computers were simple and limited in processing, memory and storage capacity,
the x86 computer and its operating systems (OSes) were typically only capable of
supporting a single application. One big, shared computer was replaced by many
little cheap computers. Virtualization was no longer necessary, and its use faded
into history along with mainframes.

But two factors emerged that drove the return of virtualization technology to the
modern enterprise. First, computer hardware evolved quickly and dramatically. By
the early 2000s, typical enterprise-class servers routinely provided multiple
processors and far more memory and storage than most enterprise applications could
realistically use. This resulted in wasted resources -- and wasted capital
investment -- as excess computing capacity on each server went unused. It was
common to find an enterprise server utilizing only 15% to 25% of its available
resources.

The second factor was a hard limit on facilities. Organizations simply procured and
deployed additional servers as more workloads were added to the enterprise
application repertoire. Over time, the sheer number of servers in operation could
threaten to overwhelm a data center's physical space, cooling capacity and power
availability. The early 2000s experienced major concerns with energy availability,
distribution and costs. The trend of spiraling server counts and wasted resources
was unsustainable.

History of virtualization timeline

Virtualization has seen emerging technologies such as x86 architecture, hypervisors
and virtual switches.
Server virtualization reemerged in the late 1990s with several basic products and
services, but it wasn't until the release of VMware's ESX Server 1.0 product in
2001 that organizations finally had access to a production-ready virtualization
software platform. The years that followed introduced additional virtualization
products from the Xen Project, Microsoft's Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 and
others. Virtualization had matured in stability and performance, and the
introduction of Docker in 2013 ushered in the era of virtualized containers
offering greater speed and scalability for microservices application architectures
compared to traditional VMs.

Today's virtualization platforms embrace the same functional ideas as their early
mainframe counterpart. Virtualization abstracts software from the underlying
hardware, enabling virtualization to provision and manage virtualized resources as
isolated and independent logical instances -- effectively turning one physical
server into multiple virtual servers, each capable of operating independently to
support multiple applications running on the same physical computer at the same
time.

The importance of server virtualization has been profound because it addresses the
two problems that plagued enterprise computing into the 21st century.
Virtualization lowers the physical server count, enabling an organization to reduce
the number of physical servers in the data center -- or run vastly more workloads
without adding servers. It's a technique called server consolidation. The lower
server count also conserves data center space, power and cooling; this can often
forestall or even eliminate the need to build new data center facilities. In
addition, virtualization platforms routinely provide powerful capabilities such as
centralized VM management, VM migration -- enabling a VM to easily move from one
system to another -- and workload/data protection through backups and snapshots.

Virtualization also formed a cornerstone of modern cloud services. By helping to

overcome the limitations of physical server environments, virtualization provided a
principal mechanism to allow flexible, highly consolidated, highly efficient,
software-driven data centers that are essential to practical cloud computing. There
would be no cloud without server virtualization and other virtualization
technologies such as network virtualization.

How does server virtualization work?

Server virtualization works by abstracting or isolating a computer's hardware from
all the software that might run on that hardware. This abstraction is accomplished
by a hypervisor, a specialized software product which must be installed on a
physical computer. There are numerous hypervisors in the enterprise space,
including Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

Later introduction of virtual containers as a virtualization alternative uses a

hypervisor variation called a container engine, such as Docker or Apache Mesos.
Although the characteristics and behaviors of containers are slightly different
than their VM counterparts, the underlying goals of resource abstraction,
provisioning and management are identical.

Abstraction recognizes the computer's physical resources -- including processors,

memory, storage volumes and network interfaces -- and creates logical aliases for
those resources. For example, a physical processor can be abstracted into a logical
representation called a virtual CPU, or vCPU. The hypervisor is responsible for
managing all the virtual resources that it abstracts and handles all the data
exchanges between virtual resources and their physical counterparts.

Server virtualization architecture

Virtualization uses software that simulates hardware functionality to create a
virtual system, enabling organizations to run multiple operating systems and
applications on a single server.
The real power of a hypervisor isn't abstraction, but what can be done with those
abstracted resources. A hypervisor uses virtualized resources to create logical
representations of computers, or VMs. A VM is assigned virtualized processors,
memory, storage, network adapters and other virtualized elements -- such as GPUs --
managed by the hypervisor. When a hypervisor provisions a VM, the resulting logical
instance is completely isolated from the underlying hardware and all other VMs
established by the hypervisor. This means a VM has no direct dependence on, or
knowledge of, the underlying physical computer or any of the other VMs that might
share the physical computer's resources.

This logical isolation, combined with careful resource management, enables a

hypervisor to create and control multiple VMs on the same physical computer at the
same time -- with each VM capable of acting as a complete, fully functional
computer. Virtualization enables an organization to carve several virtual servers
from a single physical server. Once a VM is established, it requires a complete
suite of software installation, including its own operating system, drivers,
libraries and the desired enterprise application. This enables an organization to
use multiple OSes to support a wide mix of workloads all on the same physical
computer. For example, one VM might use a Windows Server version to run a Windows
application, while another VM on the same computer might use a Linux variation to
run a Linux application.

The abstraction enabled by virtualization gives VMs extraordinary flexibility that

isn't possible with traditional physical computers and physical software
installations. All VMs exist and run in a computer's physical memory space, so VMs
can easily be saved as ordinary memory image files. These saved files can be used
to quickly create duplicate or clone VMs on the same or other computers across the
enterprise, or to save the VM at that point in time. Similarly, a VM can easily be
moved from one virtualized computer to another simply by copying the desired VM
from the memory space of a source computer to a memory space in a target computer
and then deleting the original VM from the source computer. In most cases, the
migration can take place without disrupting the VM or user experience.
Although virtualization makes it possible to create multiple logical computers from
a single physical computer, the actual number of VMs that can be created is limited
by the physical resources present on the host computer, and the computing demands
imposed by the enterprise applications running in those VMs. For example, a
computer with four CPUs and 64 GB of memory might host up to four VMs each with one
vCPU and 16 GB of virtualized memory. Once a VM is created, it's possible to change
the abstracted resources assigned to the VM to optimize the VM's performance and
maximize the number of VMs hosted on the system.

Newer and more resource-rich computers can host a larger number of VMs, while older
systems or those with compute-intensive workloads might host fewer VMs. It's
possible for the hypervisor to assign resources to more than one VM -- a practice
called overcommitment -- but this is discouraged because of computing performance
penalties incurred, as the system must time-share any overcommitted resources. The
ready availability of powerful new computers also makes overcommitment all but
unnecessary because the penalties of overcommitment far outweigh the benefits of
squeezing another VM onto a physical system. It's easier and better to just
provision the additional VM on another system where resources are available.

What are the benefits of server virtualization?

Virtualization brings a wide range of technological and business benefits to the

organization. Consider a handful of the most important and common virtualization
benefits:

Server consolidation. Because virtualization enables one physical server to do the

work of several servers, the total number of servers in the enterprise can be
reduced. It's a process called server consolidation. For example, suppose there are
currently 12 physical servers, each running a single application. With the
introduction of virtualization, each physical server might host three VMs, with
each VM running an application. Then, the organization would only require four
physical servers to run the same 12 workloads.
Simplified physical infrastructure. With fewer servers, the number of racks and
cables in the data center is dramatically reduced. This simplifies deployments and
troubleshooting. The organization can accomplish the same computing goals with just
a fraction of the space, power and cooling required for the physical server
complement.
Reduced hardware and facilities costs. Server consolidation lowers the cost of data
center hardware as well as facilities -- remember, less power and cooling. Server
consolidation through virtualization is a significant cost-saving tactic for
organizations with large server counts and was one of the primary drivers for early
virtualization adoption through the 2000s.
Greater server versatility. Because every VM exists as its own independent
instance, every VM must run an independent OS. However, the OS can vary between
VMs, enabling the organization to deploy any desired mix of Windows, Linux and
other OSes on the same physical hardware. Such flexibility is unmatched in
traditional physical server deployments.
Improved management. Virtualization centralizes resource control and VM instance
creation. Modern virtualization adds a wealth of tools and features that give IT
administrators control and oversight of the virtualized environment. As examples,
live migration features enable a VM to be moved between two physical servers
without stopping the workload. Data protection features, such as snapshots, can
capture a VM's state at any point in time, enabling the VM to be recovered quickly
and easily from unexpected faults or disasters. Virtualization lends itself well to
centralized management, enabling admins to see all VMs in the environment and
deploy patches or updates with less chance of mistakes.
Server virtualization benefits
Server virtualization benefits include cost savings, more efficient resource
provisioning and improved productivity.
What are the disadvantages of server virtualization?

Although server virtualization brings a host of potential benefits to the

organization, the additional software and management implications of virtualization
software bring numerous possible disadvantages that the organization should
consider:

Risk and availability. Running multiple workloads on the same physical computer
carries risks for the organization. Before the advent of virtualization, a server
failure only affected the associated workload. With virtualization, a server
failure can affect multiple workloads, potentially causing greater disruption to
the organization, its employees, partners and customers. IT leaders must consider
issues such as workload distribution -- which VMs should reside on which physical
servers -- and implement recovery and resiliency techniques to ensure critical VMs
are available in the aftermath of server or other physical infrastructure faults.
VM sprawl. IT resources depend on careful management to track the availability,
utilization, health and performance of resources. Knowing what's present, how it's
used and how it's working are keys to data center efficiency. A persistent
challenge with virtualization and VMs is the creation and eventual -- though
sometimes unintended -- abandonment of VMs. Unused or unneeded VMs continue to
consume valuable server resources but only do a little valuable work; meanwhile,
those resources aren't available to other VMs. Over time, VMs proliferate, and the
organization runs short of resources, forcing it to make unplanned investments in
additional capacity. The phenomenon is called VM sprawl or virtual server sprawl.
Unneeded VMs must be identified and decommissioned so that resources are freed for
reuse. Proper workload lifecycle management and IT resource management will help to
mitigate sprawl issues, but it takes effort and discipline to address sprawl.
Resource shortages. Virtualization makes it possible to exceed normal server
resource utilization, primarily in memory and networking. For example, VMs can
share the same physical memory space, relying on conventional page swap --
temporarily moving memory pages to a hard disk so the memory space can be used by
another application. Virtualization can assign more memory than the server has;
this is called memory overcommitment. Overcommitment is undesirable because the
additional latency of disk access can slow the VM's performance. Network bandwidth
can also become a bottleneck as multiple VMs on the same server compete for network
access. Both issues can be addressed by upgrading the host server or by
redistributing VMs between servers.
Licensing. Software costs money in procurement and licensing, which can easily be
overlooked. Hypervisors and associated virtualization-capable management tools
impose additional costs on the organization, and hypervisor licensing must be
carefully monitored to observe the terms and conditions of the software's licensing
agreements. License violations can carry litigation and significant financial
penalties for the offending organization. In addition, bare-metal VMs require
independent OSes, requiring licenses for each OS deployment.
Experience. Successful implementation and management of a virtualized environment
depends on the expertise of IT staff. Education and experience are essential to
ensure that resources are provisioned efficiently and securely, monitored and
recovered in a timely manner, and protected appropriately to ensure each workload's
continued availability. Business policies play an important role in resource use,
helping to define how new VMs are requested, approved, provisioned and managed
throughout the VM's lifecycle. Fortunately, virtualization is a mature and widely
adopted technology today, so there are ample opportunities for education and
mentoring in hypervisors and virtualization management.
Server virtualization drawbacks
Server virtualization disadvantages include implementation and licensing costs,
virtual server sprawl, security concerns and resource contention.
Use cases and applications
Virtualization has proven to be a reliable and versatile technology that has
permeated much of the data center in the last two decades. Yet organizations might
continue to face important questions about suitable use cases and applications for
virtualization deployment. Today, server virtualization can be applied across a
vast spectrum of enterprise use cases, projects and business objectives, including
the following:

Server consolidation. Consolidation is the quintessential use case for server

virtualization -- it's what put virtualization on the map. Consolidation is the
process of translating physical workloads into VMs, and then migrating those VMs
onto fewer physical servers. This reduces server count, mitigates the costs of
server purchases and maintenance, frees space in the data center and eases the
power and cooling needs for IT. Virtualization enables IT to do more with less and
save money at the same time. Consolidation might simply be an assumed use case
today, but it's still a primary driver for virtualization.
Development and testing. Although server virtualization supports production
environments and workloads, the flexibility and ease that virtualization brings to
VM provisioning and deployment makes it good for development and testing
initiatives. It's a simple matter to provision a VM to test a new software build;
experiment with VM configurations, optimizations and integrations -- getting
multiple VMs to communicate -- and validate workload recoveries as part of disaster
recovery testing. These VMs are often temporary and can be removed when testing is
complete to avoid undesirable VM sprawl.
Improve availability. Virtualization software routinely includes an assortment of
features and functionality that can enhance the reliability and availability of
workloads running in VMs. As an example, live migration enables a VM to be moved
between physical servers without stopping the workload. VMs can be moved from
troubled machines or systems scheduled for maintenance without any noticeable
disruption. Functions such as prioritized VM restart ensure that the most important
VMs -- those with critical workloads and services or dependencies -- are restarted
before other VMs to streamline restarts after disruptions. Features such as
snapshots can maintain recent VM copies, protecting VMs and enabling rapid restarts
with little, if any, data loss. Other availability features help multiple instances
of the same workload share traffic and processing loads, maintaining workload
availability should one VM fail. Virtualization has become a central element of
maintenance and disaster plans.
Centralization. Before server virtualization, the onus was on IT staff to track
applications and associated servers. Virtualization brings powerful tools that can
discover, organize, track and manage all the VMs running across the environment
through a single pane of glass to provide IT admins with comprehensive views of the
VM landscape, as well as any alerts or problems that might require attention. In
addition, virtualization tools are highly suited to automation and orchestration
technologies, enabling autonomous VM creation and management to speed IT
administration tasks.
Multi-platform support. Each VM runs its own unique OS. Virtualization has emerged
as a convenient means for supporting multiple OSes in a single physical server, as
well as servers across the entire data center environment. Organizations can run
desired mixes of Windows, Linux and other OSes on the same x86 server hardware that
is completely abstracted by virtualization's hypervisor.
There are very few enterprise workloads that can't function well in a VM. These
include legacy applications that depend on direct access to specific server
hardware devices to function, such as a specific processor model or type. Such
concerns are rare today and should continue to abate as legacy applications are
inevitably revised and updated over time.

What are the types of server virtualization?

Virtualization is accomplished through several proven techniques: the use of VMs,

the use of paravirtualization and the implementation of virtualization hosted by
the OS.

Full virtualization vs. paravirtualization comparison chart

Full virtualization is a complete abstraction of resources from the underlying
hardware, whereas paravirtualization requires the OS to communicate with the
hypervisor.
VM model
The VM model is the most popular and widely implemented approach to virtualization
used by VMware and Microsoft. This approach employs a hypervisor based on a virtual
machine monitor (VMM) that is usually applied directly onto the computer's
hardware. Such hypervisors are typically dubbed Type 1, full virtualization or
bare-metal virtualization, and require no dedicated OS on the host computer. In
fact, a bare-metal hypervisor is often regarded as a virtualization OS -- an
operating system in its own right. The term host VM is often applied to a principal
VM running the server's management software or other main workload -- though Type 1
hypervisors rarely designate or require a host VM today.

The hypervisor is responsible for abstracting and managing the host computer's
resources, such as processors and memory, and then providing those abstracted
resources to one or more VM instances. Each VM exists as a guest atop the
hypervisor. Guest VMs are completely logically isolated from the hypervisor and
other VMs. Each VM requires its own guest OS, enabling organizations to employ
varied OS versions on the same physical computer.

Paravirtualization
Early bare-metal hypervisors faced performance limitations. Paravirtualization
emerged to address those early performance issues by modifying the host OS to
recognize and interoperate with a hypervisor through commands called hypercalls.
Once successfully modified, the virtualized computer could create and manage guest
VMs. OSes installed in guest VMs could employ varied and unmodified OSes and
unmodified applications.

The principal challenge of paravirtualization is the need for a host OS -- and the
need to modify that host OS -- to support virtualization. Unmodified proprietary
OSes, such as Microsoft Windows, won't support a paravirtualized environment, and a
paravirtualized hypervisor, such as Xen, requires support and drivers built into
the Linux kernel. This poses considerable risk for OS updates and changes. An
organization shifting from one OS to another might risk losing paravirtualization
support. The popularity of paravirtualization quickly waned as computer hardware
evolved to support VMM-based virtualization directly, such as introducing
virtualization extensions to the processors' command set.

Full vs. para vs. hardware-assisted virtualization

Before hardware-assisted virtualization, virtualization was accomplished using two
techniques: full virtualization and paravirtualization.
Hosted virtualization
Although it's most common to host a hypervisor directly on a computer's hardware --
foregoing the need for a host OS -- a hypervisor can also be installed atop an
existing host OS to provide virtualization services for one or more VMs. This is
dubbed Type 2 or hosted virtualization and is employed by products such as
Virtuozzo and Solaris Zones. The Type 2 hypervisor enables each VM to share the
underlying host OS kernel along with common binaries and libraries, whereas Type 1
hypervisors don't allow such sharing.

Hosted virtualization potentially makes guest VMs far more resource efficient
because VMs share a common OS -- the OS need not be duplicated for every VM.
Consequently, hosted virtualization can potentially support hundreds, even
thousands, of VM instances on the same system. However, the common OS offers a
single vector for failure or attack: If the host OS is compromised, all the VMs
running atop the hypervisor are potentially compromised too.

The efficiency of hosted VMs has spawned the development of containers. The basic
concept of containers is identical to hosted virtualization where a hypervisor is
installed atop a host OS, and virtual instances all share the same OS. But the
hypervisor layer -- for example, Docker and Apache Mesos -- is tailored
specifically for high volumes of small, efficient VMs intended to share common
components or dependencies such as binaries and libraries. Containers have found
significant growth with microservice-based software architectures where agile,
highly scalable components are deployed and removed from the environment quickly.

VM vs. container architecture

VMs take up more space than containers because they need a guest OS to run. Each
container shares the host's OS. Some users deploy containers within VMs to improve
container security.
Migration and deployment best practices

Virtualization brings powerful capabilities to enterprise IT, but virtualization

requires an additional software layer that demands careful and considered
management -- especially in areas of VM deployment and migration.

A VM can be created on demand, manually constructing the VM by provisioning

resources and setting an array of configuration items, then installing the OS and
application. Although a manual process can work fine for ad hoc testing or
specialized use cases, such as software evaluation, deployment can be vastly
accelerated using templates, which predefine the resources, configuration and
contents of a desired VM. A template defines the VM, which can then automatically
be built quickly and accurately, and duplicated as needed. Major hypervisors and
associated management tools support the use of templates, including Hyper-V and
vSphere.

Templates are important in enterprise computing environments. They bring

consistency and predictability to VM creation, ensuring the following:

Resources are optimally provisioned.

Security is correctly configured, such as adding shielded VMs in Hyper-V.
All contents added to the VM, such as OSes, are properly licensed.
The VM is deployed to suitable servers to observe server load, network load
balancing and other factors in the data center.
Templates not only streamline IT efforts and enhance workload performance, but also
reflect the organization's business policies and strengthen compliance
requirements. Tools such as Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, Packer
and PowerCLI can help create and deploy templates.

Migration is a second vital aspect of virtualization process and practice.

Different hypervisors can offer different feature sets and aren't 100%
interoperable. An organization might opt to use multiple hypervisors, but moving an
existing VM from one hypervisor to another requires a means to migrate VMs created
for one hypervisor to function on another hypervisor instead. Consider a migration
from Hyper-V to VMware, where a tool such as VMware vCenter Converter can help to
migrate VMs en masse.

Migrations typically involve a consideration of current VM inventory that should

detail the number of VMs, destination system capacity and dependencies. Admins can
select source VMs, set destination VMs -- including any destination folders --
install any agents needed for the conversion, set migration options such as the VM
format and submit the migration job for execution. It's often possible to set
migration schedules, enabling admins to set desired migration times and groups so
related VMs can be moved in the best order at a time when effects are minimized.

Such hypervisor migrations aren't quick or easy. The decision to change hypervisors
and migrate VMs from one hypervisor to another should be carefully tested and
validated well in advance of any actual migration initiative.

Server virtualization management

Managing virtualization across an enterprise requires a combination of practical

experience, clear policies, conscientious planning and capable tools.
Virtualization management can usually be clarified through a series of common best
practices that emphasize the role of the infrastructure as well as the business:

Have a plan. Don't adopt virtualization for its own sake. Server virtualization
offers some significant benefits, but there are also costs and complexities to
consider. An organization planning to adopt virtualization for the first time
should have a clear understanding of why and where the technology fits in a
business plan. Similarly, organizations that already virtualize parts of the
environment should understand why and how expanding the role of virtualization will
benefit the business. The answer might be as obvious as a server consolidation
project to save money, or a vehicle to support active software development projects
outside of the production environment. Regardless of the drivers, have a plan
before going into a virtualization initiative.
Assess the hardware. Get a sense of scope. Virtualization software, both
hypervisors and management tools, must be purchased and maintained. Understand the
number of systems as well as the applications that must be virtualized and
investigate the infrastructure to verify that the hardware should support
virtualization. Almost all current data center hardware is suited for
virtualization but perform the due diligence upfront to avoid discovering an
incompatibility or inadequate hardware during an installation.
Test and learn. Any new virtualization rollout is typically preceded by a period of
testing and experimentation, especially when the technology is new to the
organization and IT team. IT teams should have a thorough working knowledge of a
virtualization platform before it's deployed and used in a production setting. Even
when virtualization is already present, the move to virtualize new workloads --
especially mission-critical workloads -- should involve detailed proof-of-principle
projects to learn the tools and validate the process. Smaller organizations can
turn to service providers and consultants for help if necessary.
Focus on the business. Virtualization should be deployed and used according to the
needs of the business, including a careful consideration of security, regulatory
compliance, business continuance, disaster recovery and VM lifecycles --
provisioning, using and then later recovering resources. IT management tools should
support virtualization and map appropriately against all those business
considerations.
Start small and build out. Organizations new to server virtualization should follow
a period of testing and experimentation with small, noncritical virtualization
deployments, such as test and development servers. Seek the small and quick wins to
gain experience, learn troubleshooting and demonstrate the value of virtualization
while minimizing risk. Once a body of expertise is available, the organization can
plan and execute more complex virtualization projects.
Adopt guidelines. As the organization embraces server virtualization, it's
appropriate to create and adopt guidelines around VM provisioning, monitoring and
lifecycles. Computing resources cost money. Guidelines can help codify the
processes and practices that enable an organization to manage those costs, avoid
resource waste by preventing overprovisioning and VM sprawl and maintain consistent
behaviors that tie back to security and compliance issues. Guidelines should be
periodically reviewed and updated over time.
Select a tool. Virtualization management tools usually aren't the first
consideration in an organization's virtualization strategy. Virtualization
platforms typically include basic tools, and it's good practice to get comfortable
with those tools in the early stages of virtualization adoption. Eventually, the
organizations might find benefits in adopting more comprehensive and powerful tools
that support large and sophisticated virtualization environments. By then, the
organization and IT staff will have a clear picture of the features and
functionality required from a tool, why those features are needed and how these
features will benefit the organization. Server virtualization management tools are
selected based on a wide range of criteria, including licensing costs, cross-
platform compatibility supporting multiple hypervisors from multiple vendors,
support for templates and automation, direct control over VMs and storage, and even
the potential for self-service and chargebacks -- enabling other departments or
users to provision VMs and receive billing if desired. Organizations can choose
from many server virtualization monitoring tools that vary in features, complexity,
compatibility and cost. Virtualization vendors typically provide tools intended for
the vendor's specific hypervisors. For example, Microsoft System Center supports
Hyper-V, while vCenter Server is suited for VMware hypervisors. But organizations
can also opt for third-party tools, including ManageEngine Applications Manager,
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and Veeam One.
Support automation. Virtualization lends itself to automation and orchestration
techniques that can speed common provisioning and management tasks while ensuring
consistent execution, minimizing errors, mitigating security risks and bolstering
compliance. Generally, tools support automation, but it takes human experience and
insight to codify established practices and processes into suitable automation. The
adoption of virtual containers closely depends on automation and orchestration --
and uses well-designed tools such as Kubernetes -- to manage a containerized
environment.
Vendors and products

There are numerous virtualization offerings in the current marketplace, but the
choice of vendors and products often depends heavily on virtualization goals and
established IT infrastructures. Organizations that need bare-metal -- Type 1 --
hypervisors for production workloads can typically select from VMware vSphere,
Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Hypervisor, IBM Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV)
and Oracle VM Server for x86. VMware dominates the current virtualization landscape
for its rich feature set and versatility. Microsoft Hyper-V is a common choice for
organizations that already standardize on Microsoft Windows Server platforms. RHEV
is commonly employed in Linux environments.

Hosted -- Type 2 -- hypervisors are also commonplace in test and development

environments as well as multi-platform endpoints -- such as PCs that need to run
Windows and Mac applications. Popular offerings include VMware Workstation, VMware
Fusion, VMware Horizon, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Parallels Desktop. VMware's
multiple offerings provide general-purpose virtualization, supporting Windows and
Linux OSes and applications on Mac hardware, as well as the deployment of virtual
desktop infrastructure across the enterprise. Oracle's product is also general-
purpose, supporting multiple OSes on a single desktop system. Parallels'
hypervisors support non-Mac OSes on Mac hardware.

Type 1 vs. Type hypervisor differences

A Type 1 hypervisor runs on bare metal and a Type 2 hypervisor runs on top of an
operating system.
Hypervisors can vary dramatically in terms of features and functionality. For
example, when comparing vSphere and Hyper-V, decision-makers typically consider
issues such as the way both hypervisors manage scalability -- the total number of
processors and clusters supported by the hypervisor -- dynamic memory management,
cost and licensing issues, and the availability and diversity of virtualization
management tools.

But some products are also designed for advanced mission-specific tasks. When
comparing vSphere ESXi to Nutanix, Nutanix AHV brings hyperconverged infrastructure
(HCI), software-defined storage and its Prism management platform to enterprise
virtualization. However, AHV is intended for HCI only; organizations that need more
general-purpose virtualization and tools might turn to the more mature VMware
platform instead.

Organizations can also choose between Xen -- commercially called Citrix Hypervisor
-- and Linux KVM hypervisors. Both can run multiple OSes simultaneously, providing
network flexibility, but the decision often depends on the underlying
infrastructure and any cloud interest. Today, Amazon is reducing support for Xen
and opting for KVM, and this can influence the choice of hypervisor for
organizations worried about the integration of virtualization software with any
prospective cloud provider.

The choice of any hypervisor should only be made after an extended period of
evaluation, testing and experimentation. IT and business leaders should have a
clear understanding of the compatibilities, performance and technical nuances of a
preferred hypervisor, as well as a thorough picture of the costs and license
implications of the hypervisor and management tools.

What's the future of server virtualization?

Server virtualization has come a long way in the last two decades. Today, server
virtualization is viewed largely as a commodity. It's table stakes -- a commonly
used, almost mandatory, element of any modern enterprise IT infrastructure.
Hypervisors have also become commodity products with little new or innovative
functionality to distinguish competitors in the marketplace. The future of server
virtualization isn't a matter of hypervisors, but rather how server virtualization
can support vital business initiatives.

First, server virtualization isn't a mutually exclusive technology. One hypervisor

type might not be ideal for every task, and bare-metal, hosted and container-based
hypervisors can coexist in the same data center to serve a range of specific roles.
Organizations that have standardized one type of virtualization might find reasons
to deploy and manage additional hypervisor types moving forward.

Consider the burgeoning influence of containers. VMs and containers are two
different types of virtualization, handled by two different types of hypervisors --
yet the VMs and containers can certainly operate side-by-side in a data center to
handle different types of enterprise workloads.

Second, the continued influence and evolution of technologies such as HCI will test
the limits of virtualization management. For example, recent trends toward
disaggregation or HCI 2.0 work by separating computing and storage resources, and
virtualization tools must efficiently organize those disaggregated resources into
pools and tiers, provision those resources to workloads and monitor those
distributed resources accurately.

The continued threats of security breaches and malicious attacks will further the
need for logging, analytics and reporting, change management and automation. These
factors will drive the evolution of server virtualization management tools --
though not the hypervisor itself -- and improve visibility into the environment for
business insights and analytics.

Look toward the future of virtualization management. The focus of virtualization is

shifting from the hypervisors -- what you need to do -- to the automation,
orchestration and overall intelligence available to streamline and assist
administrators on a daily basis -- how you need to do it. Tools like Kubernetes for
Docker containers, along with scripts and templates, are absolutely essential for
successful container deployments. Look for AI technologies to add autonomy,
analytics and predictive features to dynamic virtualized environments.

Finally, traditional server virtualization will see continued integration with

clouds and cloud platforms, enabling easier and more fluid migrations between data
centers and clouds. Examples of such integrations include VMware Cloud on AWS and
Microsoft Azure Stack.

Stephen J. Bigelow, senior technology editor at TechTarget, has more than 20 years
of technical writing experience in the PC and technology industry.

Alexander S. Gillis is a technical writer for the WhatIs team at TechTarget.

This was last updated in March 2024

Continue Reading About What is server virtualization? The ultimate guide
Benefits of data center virtualization
An overview of hardware support for virtualization
A beginner's guide to Hyper-V checkpoints
Follow this 10-point virtualization security checklist
VM cost calculation guide
Dig Deeper on Containers and virtualization
Type 2 hypervisor (hosted hypervisor) RahulAwati
By: Rahul Awati
bare-metal hypervisor (Type 1 hypervisor) RobertSheldon
By: Robert Sheldon
host virtual machine (host VM) KinzaYasar
By: Kinza Yasar
Containers vs. VMs: What are the key differences? StephenBigelow
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