Virtualization

Virtualization

Introduction

The creation of a virtual version of a thing (rather than the actual thing or in place of the actual thing) is known as virtualization in the computing world. It is a term that is quite common to computing experts and programmers. The virtualization could be of a hardware platform, an operating system (also commonly referred to as an OS), a network system or a storage device. Previously, the phenomenon of virtualization was not so common but since the world has started changing again and the next revolution to hit the technological world is the upcoming of wireless technologies, the concept of virtualization and wireless integration has also risen considerably in the computing world.

In the classical sense, a physical computing machine is a complete, actual machine with physical hardware that can be touched and felt. A virtual machine, on the other hand, is a machine built out of a set of programs and files. The concept is a bit confusing for people not aware of technological terms and operations but to programmers and computer experts, it is a common terminology (Kusnetzky, 2007).

Computer experts have labelled virtualization as the integral part of a growing trend in enterprise and organization Information Technology which will soon be able to manage its own operations based on “perception of activities” and utility computing. In such a scenario, the processing power of computers would be seen only as a utility and clients would only be paying for the use of such a utility. Virtualization allows the usage of several operating systems in a parallel manner on one single CPU (central processing unit) which helps with the reduction of heat, augmentation of multitasking and multiprocessing.

Some of the very recent examples of corporate virtualization are the backup storage facilities offered by companies such as Google and Apple. The “cloud” storage facility offered by Google and Apple's iCloud facility allows users to store their files on a virtual hard drive and the user only has to pay for the service of the utility, not for the cost of the hardware.

Desktop Virtualization

A report of computer economics examined the adoption trends of desktop virtualization along with providing data about how many organizations have employed the technology, how many are going to implement, and how many organizations are planning to expand it. It also gives insight on their economic experiences along with the examination of ROI (Return on Investment) in terms of the percentage of companies that have reported break-even and positive ROI in the time period of two years. Its benefits include: Improved flexibility and independence on the desktop location, increase data security and regulatory compliance and easy and effective management of the applications and the desktop. Liao, Jin, Hu, & Liu (2009) studied the emerging trend of desktop virtualization. Along with providing different solutions and methods review, they presented a system named LVD, which combines the inexpensive computers and virtualization technology for light weight virtual desktop system realization (Liao et al., 2009). They implemented LVD in a cluster and compared the ...