Virtualization Overview

Virtualization is a important technology in use in enterprise computing. Virtualization basically lets you run multiple instances of software that normally runs on specific hardware on virtual hardware. For example an instance of window which you would normally install on a “bare metal” computer can be installed on a “virtual” hyper V machine. This allow you to use a single device to run multiple machines worth of computing.

Virtualization has quite a few benefits included utilization efficiency. If you have a server that isn’t being utilized for office users you can set up a virtualized instance for say a security system. You can basically use that hardware for several purposes.

Another huge benefit is your server become hardware agnostic you can basically copy that instance of the server onto another physical server and have it run there. So if you business relies on a certain piece of software you can move it to a cheaper host or to your own server when you need it.

There are quite a few companies that develop virtualization software the larger ones are Microsoft and their Hyper V product, Citrix’s Xen,  VMware’s ESXi, Oracle’s VM. There are also a free open source alternative like proxmox, or oracle’s virtualbox.