Comparison of virtualization systems. Free server virtualization platforms Virtualization of operating systems

IN lately Many different companies operating not only in the IT sector, but also in other areas, began to seriously look after virtualization technologies. Home users also felt the reliability and convenience of virtualization platforms, allowing to run several operating systems in virtual machinesah at the same time. On the this moment Virtualization technology are among the most promising estimates of various market researchers. information technologies. The market of virtualization and control platforms is currently growing greatly, and new players appear on it periodically, as well as in the midst of the acquisition process. large players Small Development Companies software For virtualization and means platforms to improve the efficiency of using virtual infrastructures.

Meanwhile, many companies are not yet ready to invest serious funds into virtualization, since they cannot accurately assess the economic effect of the introduction of this technology and do not have sufficient qualifications personnel. If in many Western countries there are already professional consultants who can analyze IT infrastructure, prepare a plan for the virtualization of the company's physical servers and evaluate the profitability of the project, then in Russia there are very few such people. Of course, in the coming years, the situation will change, and at the time when various companies will appreciate the advantages of virtualization, there are specialists who have sufficient knowledge and experience to implement virtualization technologies at various scales. At the same time, many companies only carry out local experiments on the use of virtualization tools, applying, mainly free platforms.

Fortunately, many vendors, in addition to commercial virtualization systems, also offer free platforms with limited functionality, so that companies can partly use virtual machines in the enterprise production environment and, at the same time, evaluate the possibility of transition to serious platforms. In the sector desktop computersUsers also begin to apply virtual machines in everyday activity and do not provide large requirements for virtualization platforms. Therefore, free funds are considered by them first of all.

Leaders in the production of virtualization platforms

The development of virtualization tools at various levels of abstraction of systems has been continuing for more than thirty years. However, only relatively recent hardware power of servers and desktop PCs allowed us to seriously perceive this technology regarding the virtualization of operating systems. It so happened that many years, both various companies and enthusiasts developed various means to virtualize operating systems, but not all of them are currently being actively supported and are in an acceptable condition for efficiently use. Today, the leaders in the field of virtualization media are VMware, Microsoft, SWSoft (together with the Parallels owned by it), Xensource, Virtual Iron and Innotek. In addition to the products of these vendors, there are also developments such as QEMU, Bosch and other, as well as means of virtualization of operating system developers (for example, Solaris Containers) that have not received widespread and used by a narrow circle of specialists.

Companies achieved a certain success in the virtualization server platforms market, distribute some of their products for free, while doing the bet not on the platform themselves, but on controls, without which it is difficult to use virtual machines on a large scale. In addition, commercial virtualization board platforms intended for use by IT professionals and software development companies have significantly greater capabilities than their free analogues.

Nevertheless, if you use server virtualization on a small scale, in the SMB sector (Small and Medium Business), free platforms may well fill in a niche in the company's production environment and ensure significant cash savings.

When to use free platforms

If you do not need a mass deployment of virtual servers in an organization, constant control of physical server performance with a changing load and high degree of accessibility, you can use virtual machines based on free platforms to maintain internal organization servers. With an increase in the number of virtual servers and a high degree of their consolidation on physical platforms, it is required to use powerful virtual infrastructure management and maintenance tools. Depending on whether you need to use various storage systems and networks, for example, Storage Area Network (SAN), reserve copy and recovery after failures and "hot" migration of running virtual machines to other equipment, you may not have enough opportunities for free virtualization platforms, however, it should be noted that free platforms are constantly updated and acquired new features, which expands the scope of their use.

Another important moment - technical support. Free virtualization platforms exist either within the Open Source community, where many enthusiasts are engaged in product refinement and its support, or supported by a vendor platform. The first option involves the active participation of users in the development of the product, drawing up error reports and does not guarantee solutions to your problems when using the platform, in the second case, most often, technical support is not provided at all. Therefore, the qualifications of personnel unfolding free platforms must be at a high level.

Free desktop virtualization platforms are most appropriate to apply in order to isolate custom environments, mortifying them from specific equipment, educational purposes to explore operating systems and safe tests of various software. It is unlikely to use free desktop platforms on a large scale for the development or testing of software in software companies, since they do not have sufficient for this. functionality. However, for home use, free virtualization products are fully suitable and even examples are performed when virtual machines based on free desktop virtualization systems are used in the production environment.

Free server virtualization platforms

Practically in any organization using server infrastructure, often the need to be applied both standard network services (DNS, DHCP, Active Directory) and several internal servers (applications, databases, corporate portals) who do not experience large loads and are separated from different physical servers. These servers can be consolidated in the number of several pieces in virtual machines on one physical host. This simplifies the process of migrating servers from one hardware platform to another, the costs of equipment are reduced, the backup procedure is simplified and their handling increases. Depending on the types of operating systems, which are managed by network Services, and the requirements for the virtualization system can be selected free Product For corporate environment. When selecting a virtualization server platform, it is necessary to take into account the performance characteristics (depend on both the use of virtualization techniques and the quality of the implementation of the various components of the manufacturers platform), ease of deployment, the possibility of scaling the virtual infrastructure and the availability of additional controls, maintenance and monitoring.

The project is an open source virtualization platform, the development of which is implementing a community of independent developers supported by SWSoft. The product under the GNU GPL license is distributed. The OpenVZ platform core is part of the Virtuozzo product, commercial product SWSoft possessing large than OpenVZ, opportunities. Both products use the original virtualization technique: virtualization at the level of the operating system instances. This method of virtualization has less flexibility compared to full virtualization (you can run only Linux family, since one kernel is used for all virtual environments), but it allows you to achieve minimum performance losses (about 1-3 percent). OpenVZ systems cannot be called full-fledged virtual machines, it is rather virtual environments (Virtual Environment, VE), in which the equipment components do not emulate. This approach allows only to install various Linux distributions as virtual environments on one physical server. In this case, each of the virtual environments has its own processes trees, system libraries and users and can use network interfaces in their own way.

Virtual environments are presented for users and applications that work in them, almost completely isolated media that can be controlled independently of other environments. Thanks to these factors and high performance, OpenVZ and SWSoft Virtuozzo products have been most common with the support of virtual private servers (Virtual Private Servers, VPS) in hosting systems. Based on OpenVZ, you can provide clients with several allocated virtual servers based on one hardware platform, on each of which various applications can be installed and which can be rebooted separately from other virtual environments. OpenVZ architecture is presented below:

Some independent experts conducted comparative analysis The performance of virtual servers based on commercial platforms SWSoft Virtuozzo and VMware Esx Server for hosting purposes and endowed the conclusion that Virtuozzo copes better with this task. Of course, the OpenVZ platform, which built Virtuozzo, has the same high productivity, but it lacks extended management tools that there are in Virtuozzo.

OpenVZ environment is also suitable for learning purposes, where everyone can experiment with its insulated surroundings without danger to other environments of this host. Meanwhile, the application of the OpenVZ platform for other purposes is not currently appropriate due to the obvious inflexibility of solving virtualization at the level of the operating system.

The company relatively recently entered the market of virtualization platforms, but quickly included in the competitive struggle with such serious vendors of server platforms, like VMware, Xensource and SWSoft. Virtual Iron products are based on the free Xen hypervisor supported by the Open Source Community of the XEN-Community. Virtual Iron is a virtualization platform that does not require a host operating system (the so-called Bare-Metal platform), and aims to use large enterprises in a corporate environment. Virtual Iron products have all the necessary tools for creating virtual machines, management of them and their integration into the company's manufacturing information environment. Virtual Iron supports 32- and 64-bit guest and host operating systems, as well as Virtual SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing), providing the ability to use multiple processors with virtual machines.

Initially, Virtual Iron was used by the Paravirtualization techniques to launch guest systems in virtual machines, as well as XENSOURCE products based on Xen hypervisor. The use of pathravirtualization involves the use of special versions of guest systems in virtual machines, the source code of which is modified to start their virtualization platforms. This requires changes to the kernel of the operating system, which for open source OS is not a big problem, while for proprietary closed systemsSuch as Windows is unacceptable. The greater productivity growth in ferricultualization systems is not observed. As practice has shown, operating system manufacturers reluctantly go to the inclusion of support for parataging in their products, so this technology has not gained great popularity. As a consequence, Virtual Iron is one of the first to use hardware virtualization techniques that allow you to run unmodified versions of guest systems. At the moment, latest version The Virtual Iron 3.7 platform allows you to use virtual machines on server platforms only with hardware virtualization support. The following processors are officially supported:

Intel® Xeon® 3000, 5000, 5100, 5300, 7000, 7100 Series
INTEL® CORE ™ 2 DUO E6000 SERIES
Intel® Pentium® D-930, 940, 950, 960
AMD OPTERON ™ 2200 OR 8200 SERIES PROSESSORS
AMD ATHLON ™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor
AMD TURION ™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor

In addition, on the Virtual Iron website you can find lists of a certified equipment company for your virtualization platform.

Virtual Iron products exist in three publications:

Single Server Virtualization and Management
MultiPle Server Virtualization and Management
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Solution

At the moment, the free decision is the Single Server solution, which allows you to install Virtual Iron on one physical host in the organization's infrastructure. This supports ISCSI protocol, SAN network and local storage systems.

Free Edition Single Server has the following minimum installation requirements:

2 GB RAM
CD-ROM drive
36 GB disk space
Network interface Ethernet
Network interface Fiber Channel (optional)
Support for hardware virtualization in the processor

Virtual Iron allows you to appreciate all the features of hardware virtualization and virtual machine management tools. Free edition is primarily intended to evaluate the efficiency and convenience of the virtualization platform and controls. However, it can be used in the enterprise's production environment to support the internal servers of the company. The absence of a separate host platform will allow, firstly, not spent on the purchase of a license for a host OS, and secondly, reduces performance loss to supporting guest systems. Typical applications of the free edition of Virtual Iron - Deploying multiple virtual servers in the infrastructure of a small SMB sector organization in order to separate from the equipment of vital servers and increasing their controllability. In the future, when buying a commercial version of the platform, the infrastructure of virtual servers can be expanded, as well as features such as effective means of backup and hot migration of virtual servers between hosts can be used.

From the point of view of convenience and ease of use, VMware Server is an unconditional leader, and in terms of performance does not lag behind commercial platforms (especially in Linux host systems). The disadvantages include the lack of support for hot migration and the lack of backup funds, which, however, are provided, most often, only commercial platforms. Of course, the VMware Server is the best choice for quickly deploying internal organization servers, including preset templates of virtual servers, which in excess can be found on various resources (for example,).

RESULTS

Summing up the review of free virtualization server platforms, it can be said that each of them takes its niche in the SMB sector, where, through the use of virtual machines, you can significantly improve the efficiency of the IT infrastructure, make it more flexible and reduce the cost of purchasing equipment. Free platforms, first of all, allow you to evaluate the possibilities of virtualization not on paper and experience all the advantages of this technology. In conclusion, we give summary table Characteristics of free virtualization platforms, which will help you choose a suitable server platform for your own purposes. After all, it is through free virtualization that lies the way to further investigating money on virtualization projects based on commercial systems.

Platform name, developer	Host	Officially supported guest officers	Support for multiple virtual processors (Virtual SMP)	Virtualization technique	Typical use	Performance
	Open Open Source Community Project with support for SWSoft Linux	Different Linux distributions	Yes	Virtualization of the level of the operating system	Isolation of virtual servers (including hosting services)	Without loss
Virtual Iron Software, Inc.	Not required	Windows, Redhat, SUSE	Yes (up to 8)		Virtualization of servers in the production environment	Close to native
Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Microsoft.	Windows	Windows, Linux (Red Hat and SuSe)	Not	Native Virtualization, Hardware Virtualization	Virtualization of internal servers in a corporate environment	Close to native (when installed Virtual Machine Additions)
Vmware.	Windows, Linux	DOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetWare, Solaris	Yes	Native Virtualization, Hardware Virtualization	Consolidation of small enterprises servers, Development / Testing	Close to native
Xen Express and Xen XENSOURCE (with the support of Intel and AMD)	NetBSD, Linux, Solaris	Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Windows, Plan 9	Yes	Paraircultualization, hardware virtualization	Developers, testers, IT professionals, consolidation of small enterprises servers	Close to native (some losses when working with a network and intensive use of disks)

Annotation: Information technologies brought a lot of useful and interesting things to modern society. Every day, inventive and talented people invent more and more new applications to computers as effective manufacturing tools, entertainment and cooperation. Many different software and hardware, technologies and services allow us to improve the convenience and speed of working with information daily. It is more and more difficult and more difficult to highlight the technologies of the technologies that are truly useful and learn to apply them with maximum benefit. This lecture will be discussed by another incredibly promising and truly efficient technology rapidly breaking into the world of computers - virtualization technology, which occupies a key place in the concept of "cloud" computing.

The purpose of this lecture is to obtain information on the technologies of virtualization, terminology, varieties and the main advantages of virtualization. Get acquainted with the main solutions of leading IT vendors. Consider the features of the Microsoft Virtualization Platform.

Virtualization technologies

According to statistics, the average level of loading of processor power servers running Windows does not exceed 10%, the UNIX systems are better in this indicator, but it does not exceed 20% on average. Low server use efficiency is explained widely used since the beginning of the 90s approach "one application - one server", i.e. each time the company acquires a new server for deploying a new application. Obviously, in practice, this means a rapid increase in the server park and as a result - the increase in its costs administration, energy consumption and cooling, as well as the need for additional rooms to install all new servers and purchase licenses for the server OS.

The virtualization of the physical server resources allows you to flexibly distribute them between applications, each of which "sees" only the resources intended for it and "believes" that it is allocated a separate server, i.e., in this case, the "One Server - Multiple Applications" approach is implemented but without reducing productivity, availability and safety server applications. In addition, virtualization solutions make it possible to run different OS in sections using the emulation of their system calls to server hardware resources.

Fig. 2.1.

The virtualization is based on the possibility of one computer to perform the work of several computers due to the distribution of its resources in several environments. Using virtual servers and virtual desktop computers, you can place several OS and several applications in a single location. Thus, physical and geographical restrictions cease to have any value. In addition to energy saving and cutting costs due to more efficient use of hardware resources, the virtual infrastructure provides high level resource availability, more efficient management system, increased safety and improved recovery system critical situations.

In a broad sense, the concept of virtualization is a concealment of the real implementation of any process or an object from its true presentation for the one who enjoys them. The product of virtualization is something user-friendly for use, in fact, having a more complex or completely different structure, different from the one that is perceived when working with the object. In other words, it is separated from the implementation of something. Virtualization is designed to abstruct software from the hardware.

In computer technologies, the term "virtualization" is usually understood by the abstraction of computing resources and the provision of a system of a system that "encapsulates" (hides in itself) its own implementation. Simply put, the user works with a convenient representation of the object, and it doesn't matter how the object is in reality.

Now the ability to launch several virtual machines on one physical is of great interest among computer specialists, not only because it increases the flexibility of IT infrastructure, but also because virtualization, in fact, saves money.

The history of the development of virtualization technologies has more than forty years. IBM was the first to think about creating virtual environments for various user tasks, then in mainframes. In the 60s of the last century, virtualization represented purely scientific interest and was an original solution for isolation computer Systems Within one physical computer. After the appearance of personal computers, interest in virtualization is somewhat weakened in view of the rapid development of operating systems, which presented adequate requirements for the hardware provision of that time. However, the rapid growth of the hardware capacity of computers at the end of the nineties of the last century made the IT community again recall the virtualization technologies of software platforms.

In 1999, VMWare introduced the technology of virtualization of x86 systems as effective meanscapable of converting the X86 base system to a single hardware public and destination infrastructure that provides complete isolation, mobility and a wide range of OS for applied media. VMware was one of the first to do a serious bet exclusively on virtualization. As time has shown, it turned out to be absolutely justified. Today, WMWare offers a comprehensive fourth-generation virtualization platform VMware vSphere 4, which includes means for both separate PC and for the data center. The key component of this software package is the VMware ESX Server hypervisor. Later in the "Battle" for the place in this trendy direction of the development of information technology included companies such as Parallels (previously SWSoft), Oracle (Sun Microsystems), Citrix Systems (Xensourse).

Microsoft has entered the virtualization tool market in 2003 with the acquisition of Connectih, releaseing its first Virtual PC product for desktop PCs. Since then, she has consistently increased the spectrum of proposals in this area and today almost completed the formation of a virtualization platform, which includes such solutions as Windows 2008 Server R2 C component Hyper-V, Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Remote Desktop Services, System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

To date, virtualization technology suppliers offer reliable and easy-to-control platforms, and the market of these technologies is experiencing a real boom. According to leading experts, now virtualization is included in the top three most promising computer technologies. Many experts predict that by 2015 about half of all computer systems will be virtual.

Increased interest in virtualization technologies is currently incredible. The computational power of the current processors is growing rapidly, and the question is not even that this power is to spend, but in the fact that modern "fashion" for dual-core and multi-core systems, penetrating already in personal computers (laptops and desktops), as it should not be better allowed to implement the richest potential of the ideas of the virtualization of operating systems and applications, deriving the convenience of using the computer to a new quality level. Virtualization technology becomes one of the key components (including marketing) in the newest and most future intel processors and AMD, in operating systems from Microsoft and a number of other companies.

Advantages of virtualization

We give the main advantages of virtualization technologies:

Effective use of computing resources. Instead of 3, and then 10 servers loaded by 5-20% can be used one used by 50-70%. Among other things, it is also saving electricity, as well as a significant reduction in financial investments: one high-tech server is purchased that performs 5-10 servers functions. Using virtualization, it is possible to achieve significantly more efficient use of resources, since it provides combining standard infrastructure resources into a single pool and overcomes the limitations of the outdated model "one application to the server".
Reducing infrastructure costs: Virtualization allows you to reduce the number of servers and the associated IT equipment in the information center. As a result, the need for maintenance, power supply and cooling material resources is reduced, and much less means is spent.
Software cost reduction. Some software manufacturers have entered individual licensing schemes specifically for virtual environments. So, for example, buying one license for Microsoft Windows. Server 2008 Enterprise, you get the right to simultaneously use it on 1 physical server and 4 virtual (within one server), and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter is licensed only on the number of processors and can be used simultaneously on an unlimited number of virtual servers.
Increase the flexibility and speed of the system response: Virtualization offers a new IT infrastructure management method and helps IT administrators spend less time to perform repeating tasks - for example, to initiate, configure, track and track and maintenance. Many system administrators Tried trouble when "collapses" server. And it is impossible, pulling the hard disk by rearning it into another server, run everything as before ... And the installation? Search for drivers, setup, start ... and all need time and resources. When using a virtual server - instant start-up on any "hardware" is possible, and if there is no similar server, you can download the ready-made virtual machine with a installed and configured server, from libraries supported by the companies of hypervisor developers (virtualization programs).
Incompatible applications can work on one computer. When using virtualization on one server, install Linux and windows servers, gateways, databases and other are absolutely incompatible within one non-virtualized application system.
Improving the availability of applications and ensuring the continuity of the enterprise: Thanks to a reliable system for backing up and migrating virtual environments, without interruptions in service, you will be able to reduce the periods of planned downtime and ensure the rapid restoration of the system in critical situations. "Fall" of one virtual server does not lead to the loss of other virtual servers. In addition, in case of failure of one physical server, it is possible to automatically replace the backup server. Moreover, this happens not noticeable for users without rebooting. Thereby ensuring business continuity.
Opportunities for easy archiving. Since the hard disk of the virtual machine is usually submitted as a file format, located on any physical media, virtualization makes it possible to simply copy this file to the backup media as a means of archiving and backing up the entire virtual machine. The ability to raise the server from the archive completely another wonderful feature. And you can raise the server from the archive, without destroying the current server and see the state of affairs for the last period.
Increased infrastructure management: Using centralized virtual infrastructure management allows you to reduce server administration time, provides load balancing and live migration of virtual machines.

Virtual machine we will call a software or hardware environment that hides the real implementation of any process or object from its visible representation..

- This is a completely isolated software container that works with its own OS and applications, like a physical computer. The virtual machine acts the same as a physical computer, and contains its own virtual (i.e. software) RAM, hard disk and network adapter.

The OS cannot distinguish between the virtual and physical machine. The same can be said about applications and other computers on the network. Even sama virtual machine He considers himself a "real" computer. But despite this, virtual machines consist exclusively of software components and do not include equipment. This gives them a number of unique advantages over physical equipment.

Fig. 2.2.

Consider the main features of virtual machines in more detail:

Compatibility. Virtual machines are usually compatible with all standard computers. Like a physical computer, the virtual machine runs running its own guest operating system and performs its own applications. It also contains all components, standard for physical computer (motherboard, video card, network Controller etc.). Therefore, virtual machines are fully compatible with all standard operating systems, applications and device drivers. The virtual machine can be used to perform any software suitable for the appropriate physical computer.
Isolation. Virtual machines are completely isolated from each other, as if they were physical computers, virtual machines can use the general physical resources of one computer and at the same time remain completely isolated from each other, as if they were separate physical machines. For example, if four virtual machines are launched on one physical server, and one of them gives a failure, this does not affect the availability of the remaining three machines. Isolation is an important reason for much higher availability and security of applications performed in a virtual environment compared to applications performed in a standard, non-revualized system.
Encapsulation. Virtual machines fully encapsulate the computing environment. The virtual machine is a software container connecting, or "encapsulating" a complete set of virtual hardware resources, as well as the OS and all its applications in the software package. Thanks to the encapsulation, virtual machines become incredibly mobile and convenient to manage. For example, a virtual machine can be moved or copy from one location to another as any other software file. In addition, the virtual machine can be saved on any standard data media: from the compact USB flash memory card to corporate networks storage.
Independence from equipment. Virtual machines are fully independent of the basic physical equipment on which they work. For example, for a virtual machine with virtual components (CPU, a network card, SCSI controller), you can set the settings that are absolutely not coinciding with the physical characteristics of the basic hardware. Virtual machines can even perform different operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc.) on the same physical server. In combination with encapsulation and compatibility properties, hardware independence provides the ability to freely move virtual machines from one computer based on x86 to another, without changing the drivers of devices, OS or applications. Equipment independence also makes it possible to run in combination of completely different OS and applications on one physical computer.

Consider the main varieties of virtualization, such as:

server Virtualization (Full Virtualization and Paruguratualization)
virtualization at operating systems level,
virtualization of applications,
virtualization of representations.

Virtualization technology allow you to create several server on one server. logical systems - isolated virtual machines, with complete set Functions of physical devices. Virtualization is possible not only within the framework of a single physical server, but also within several servers, a data center or even several geographically separated CDMS organizations. At the present level of technology development, it is possible to implement virtualization not only virtual machines, as well as storage systems and a full-featured network.

At the same time, most of the virtualization functional can be implemented on conventional equipment without the need to purchase highly specialized hardware or network components.

What is it for?

Virtualization greatly simplifies the work of the IT infrastructure, increasing productivity by optimizing the use of resources, reduce maintenance and management costs. The time to create a typical infrastructure is radically reduced and IT resources are rationally used, both hardware and human.

An important moment is the creation of an ever-functioning IT infrastructure, protected from failures and sustainable catastrophes. Due to the competently constructed virtualization environment, there is a reduction in unscheduled downtime and the absolute exclusion of scheduled shutdowns for server maintenance or data warehouses. At the same time, all IT services can escape from binding to a specific supplier.

For companies of any level and at any stage of the IT infrastructure, it is possible to implement the automation of processes, one way or another related to the allocation of computing resources for various divisions within the company, or for their customers.

For which categories of users is suited

Virtualization is suitable for any company seeking to create a flexible and modern computing infrastructure. Simplicity of implementation and maintenance, reliability and functionality, reducing risks for the enterprise, make informed investments in this technology. With a modern level of development of third-party cloud systems, virtualization opens unlimited opportunities to unite these technologies and further development aimed at the company's business, and not for permanent care of the IT infrastructure.

Benefits

For company management:

reducing the cost of support for IT systems;
reducing the cost of introducing new IT services.

For IT departments:

reducing the timing of introducing new IT services;
simplicity of infrastructure service;
improving the reliability of IT systems in general.

For IT staff:

increased infrastructure management;
reduction of low-skilled work;
improving your own qualifications.

Virtualization of computational resources

The first virtualization systems arose within the operating systems and allowed to create a virtual PC in parallel with the implementation of the main tasks. The development of this direction led to the emergence of a separate class of software - hypervisors. The hypervisor is set directly to the hardware platform and represents all available resources - processor megaherts, megabytes random access memory, Gigabytes of the storage location and network bandwidth for a large number of virtual machines. The hypervisor not only creates these resources for each virtual machine, but also redistributes the resources between large quantity consumers and provides a full virtual server life cycle.

Basic solutions for the virtualization of computing resources today:

VMware vSphere.
Microsoft Windows Server
Virtuozzo.
Citrix Xenserver
Oracle VM.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
Linux KVM.
Huawei FusionSphere.

Virtualization of data storage systems

Modern IT architectures necessarily contain a data storage subsystem. It can be implemented in several ways - from storage on a computing unit to devices isolated exclusively under storage. In addition, storage can occur on various media: from spindle discs and ribbons to solid-state drives.

For virtual infrastructure, the storage system is also an integral part. To optimize the work of a hypervisor with a storage system, hardware storage manufacturers equip their solutions with specialized drivers that allow you to carry out the execution of some operations on the storage, which saves computational resources. But there is another way - the use of a virtualized repository used in hyper-convergent infrastructures. Such a storage is created on the basis of the same computing nodes and uses server drives as part of a single storage. This allows you to radically reduce the cost of building and maintaining, allocate optimized storage resources for each VM. In addition, the virtualization system SCD itself builds a fault-tolerant storage scheme with load balancing and in accordance with the service policy for each VM. Virtualization systems SCHD can be used both on the scale of the data center and when performing small local tasks.

The decisions themselves may be additions to the hypervisor or to be included in its default. All major manufacturers have similar solutions in their arsenal:

Vmware Virtual San.
Microsoft Storage Spaces included in Microsoft Windows Server
Virtuozzo Storage
Red Hat Ceph.
Starwind Virtual San.
Huawei Fusionstorage
EMC Scaleiodatacore.
Virtual San.

Network virtualization

To build a fully-defined data center, you must be able not only to virtualize standard server devices, but also flexibly control the configuration of the network topology and rules of firewalls. There is exist for this separate class Products in the virtualization environment - solutions for network virtualization.

At the moment, a limited number of solutions are presented on the market to virtualize all aspects of the network immediately:

Vmware NSX.
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Datacenter with System Center
Cisco.
Huawei.

Virtualization of jobs

The most important area of \u200b\u200bapplication of virtualization technologies is the creation of user jobs when the main workload is on the general server, and the user sees the access device on the screen only the image of what is happening in the virtual PC. This technology received the name VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).

Virtual jobs allow you to allocate for each user the necessary working instruments for each user, rationally allocate software licenses, have access to the working space with stationary and mobile devices, providing convenient administration and compliance with security policies.

If the company needs to use stationary PCs or laptops for remote work, VDI technology allows you to deliver only working applications that are on a common server to devices, and do not create full-featured remote desktops.

Solutions for VDIs presented on the market:

Vmware Horizon.
Citrix Xenapp and Xendesktop
Parallels VDI and Ras
Huawei FusionAccess.

Management and Virtualization Automation

Further development of virtualization technologies and cloud services led to the creation of new IT infrastructures, hybrid and hyperkers. These infrastructures are fully software-defined and have deep integration with private or public clouds.

To manage such infrastructures, powerful tools are needed, which on the one hand will take into account the specifics of the established physical equipment, on the other hand to be able to quickly provide resources for the needs of the business, and from the third party, to be transparent and protected. For these purposes and serve as management and automation systems with virtualization.

Among the main products can be allocated:

VMware VCenter and VREALIZE
Microsoft System Center.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager
Citrix Systems Xencenter.
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager.
Dell Foglight.

The VREALIZE SUITE package is a platform for managing a hybrid cloud on VMware solutions.

Under the VREALIZE brand, VMWare combines all solutions designed to manage hybrid infrastructure, including resource management tools on cloud providers (not only VMware), as well as infrastructure management tools based on various hypervisors.

The VMware VREALIZE Suite stack meets the requirements of Gartner, which makes cloud management tools - Evaluation Criteria for Cloud Management Platforms, namely:

delivery of applications or infrastructure resources on demand via the self-service portal or service directory;
accounting the cost of cloud resources and transparent planning of financial performance of its efficiency.

Technologies

Parallels.
Vmware.
Microsoft.
Citrix.
Red Hat.
OpenStack

Specialists from Kosmonov every day work with various virtualization systems both when working with their own cloud and performing project work. During this time, we managed to work with a considerable number of virtualization systems and determine for themselves the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. In this article we collected the opinions of our engineers about the most commonly encountered virtualization systems and their brief characteristics. If you think about building a private cloud and consider various virtualization systems to solve this task this article for you.

For starters, let's understand what the virtualization system is and why it is needed. Virtualization of physical machines (servers, PC and TD) allows you to divide the power of one physical device between several virtual machines. Thus, these virtual machines can have their own operating system and software, in no way dependent on neighboring virtual machines. To date, there are many virtualization systems, each of them has its own characteristics, so let's consider each of them individually.

Vmware. vsphere. - The flagship product of the VMware company of the unconditional leader on the share of the virtualization market has many years in a row. It has a wide functionality and is specifically created for the date of centers providing cloud solutions and companies building private clouds of various scales. Has a thoughtful interface and a large number of technical documentation. If you have little experience in working with virtualization, this system will good choice For you. It is licensed by the number of physical processors in the cloud regardless of the number of cores. In view of the extensive functional and multiple modules, this system is quite demanding to the resources necessary for its operation.

WMWare. ESXI. - is an free analogue VMware vSphere. Since this hypervisor is free, it has a more modest functionality, but it is quite sufficient to implement most typical tasks Virtualization and management of a private cloud. Just as easy to use

Hyper. - V. - Product microsoft. Designed as an addition to the OS Server OS, starting in 2008. It also exists in the form of a separate product, but using Windows Server to work. This hypervisor is easy enough to set up and operate, and of course, supports all versions of OS Windows for guests, but the manufacturer does not guarantee the work of many OS Linux. Please note that the hypervisor itself applies to free licenseBut for work requires a paid OS Windows.

OpenVZ. - Fully free virtualization system implemented on the Linux kernel. Like most Linux systems have good productivity and resource consumed and well-consumed with any distributions Linux as an OS guest trucks. However, it does not support OS Windows, due to which this virtualization system cannot be considered universal.

KVM. - The virtualization system is also based on the Linux kernel and propagating free license. It has very good performance indicators by the number of resources consumed. It has greater functionality and is quite universal from the point of view of guest operating systems, as it supports absolutely all OS. To configure and support in pure form requires certain knowledge and skills to work with UNIX systems. However, there are many graphic interfaces as a supplement to the hypervisor with different ways Licensing from freely distributed to paid versions.

Xen. - Product Development of the Cambridge University with open source. Most components are deposited outside the hypervisor, which makes it possible to achieve good performance indicators. Along with the hardware virtualization, the paratage regime also supports. Xen supports the launch of most existing OS.

LXC. - Enough new system Virtualization at the operating system level which allows you to run several instances of the Linux operating system on one physical machine. A feature of this system is that it operates not by virtual servers, but by applications using the common OS kernel, which at the same time are isolated from each other, which gives the highest performance in the efficiency of resource consumption.

Virtualization system	Supported OS	Benefits	disadvantages	License
VMware vSphere.	Win / Lin.	Easy to use. Wide functionality	Resource consumption.	Paid. By the number of processors
WMWare Esxi.	Win / Lin.	Easy to use	Not the widest functionality.	Free
OpenVZ.	Linux.	Effective resource consumption	Only Linux is supported	Free
	Win / Lin.	Effective resource consumption. Supports all OS		Free
Hyper -V.	Windows	Lightweight	Only Windows is supported. Resource consumption	Free. Works on a paid OS
	Win / Lin.	High efficiency. Open source code.	Requires UNIX knowledge to customize and control systems	Free
	Linux.	High efficiency	Does not support Windows	Free

We also recall that in the Kosmonov cloud you can implement the infrastructure of any complexity, without immersing the subtlety of the work of virtualization systems and hardware with minimal time costs. In Kosmonov's cloud is available as ready solutionsAnd cloud servers to solve your business tasks.

The topic of virtualization is very extensive and there are many nuances in the work of the listed virtualization systems, along with a multitude of hardware variations. We do not give the advantages of this article, but we bring them general characteristics To select the appropriate system at the initial stage.

Virtual Environment Concept

The new direction of virtualization, which gives a common holistic picture of the entire network infrastructure using the aggregation technique.

Types of virtualization

Virtualization is a common term covering the abstraction of resources for many aspects of calculations. Virtualization types are shown below.

Software virtualization

Dynamic broadcast

With dynamic broadcast ( binary broadcast) Problem Commands Guest OCs are intercepted by a hypervisor. After these commands are replaced by safe, the management of the Guest OS control is.

Paraircultualization

Paraircuitalization - virtualization technique, in which guest operating systems are prepared for execution in a virtualized medium, for which their core is slightly modified. The operating system interacts with the program of the hypervisor, which provides it with a guest API, instead of using directly such resources as a table of memory pages.

The procedure method allows to achieve higher performance than the method of dynamic broadcast.

The method of ferricultualization is applicable only if the guest OS has open source codeswhich can be modified according to the license, or the hypervisor and the guest OS have been developed by one manufacturer, taking into account the possibility of steaming the guest OS (although, provided that under the hypervisor, a lower level hypervisor can be launched.

For the first time, the term arose in the Denali project.

Built-in virtualization

Benefits:

Sharing resources by both OS (catalogs, printers, etc.).
Convenience of the interface for applications from different systems (overlapping application windows, the same windows minimization, as in the host system)
With fine tuning on the hardware platform, the performance differs little from the original native OS. Fast switching between systems (less than 1 sec.)
A simple procedure for updating the guest OS.
Two-way virtualization (application of one system is launched in another and vice versa)

Implementation:

Hardware virtualization

Benefits:

Simplify the development of virtualization software platforms by providing hardware management interfaces and support virtual guest systems. This reduces the complexity and time on the development of virtualization systems.
The ability to increase the speed of virtualization platforms. Management of virtual guest systems is carried out directly a small intermediate layer of software, a hypervisor, which gives an increase in speed.
Protection improves, the ability to switch between multiple retained independent virtualization platforms at the hardware level appears. Each of the virtual machines can work independently, in its hardware space, fully isolated from each other. This allows you to eliminate the loss of performance on maintaining the host platform and increase the security.
The guest system becomes not tied to the host platform architecture and the implementation of the Virtualization Platform. The technology of hardware virtualization makes it possible to launch 64-bit guest systems on 32-bit host systems (with 32-bit host virtualization environments).

Examples of application:

test Laboratories and Training: Testing in virtual machines It is convenient to expose applications that affect the settings of operating systems, such as installation applications. At the expense of simplicity in deploying virtual machines, they are often used to teach new products and technologies.
distribution of pre-installed by: Many developers software products Create ready-made images of virtual machines with pre-installed products and provide them on a free or commercial basis. Such services provide VMware VMTN or Parallels PTN

Server virtualization

placing several logical servers within one physical (consolidation)
combining multiple physical servers into one logic to solve a specific task. Example: Oracle Real Application Cluster, Grid-Technology, High Performance Clusters.

Svista.
twoostwo.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization For Servers
PowerVM.

In addition, the server virtualization simplifies the restoration of the failed systems on any available computer, regardless of its specific configuration.

Virtualization of workstations

Virtualization of resources

Partitioning (partitioning). Virtualization of resources can be represented as a separation of one physical server into several parts, each of which is visible for the owner as a separate server. It is not the technology of virtual machines, carried out at the level of the OS kernel.

In systems with a second type hypervisor, both OS (guest and hypervisor) take physical resources, and requires separate licensing. Virtual serversWorking at the OS kernel level is almost not lost in speed, which makes it possible to run hundreds of virtual, not requiring additional licenses on one physical server.

A shared disk space or network bandwidth to a certain amount of smaller components, the easier resources used by the same type.

For example, the implementation of resource separation can be attributed (CROSSBOW project), which allows you to create several virtual network interfaces based on one physical.

Aggregation, distribution or addition of multiple resources in large resources or resource combination. For example, symmetric multiprocessor systems combine many processors; RAID I. disk managers combine many disks in one big logical disk; RAID I. network hardware Uses multiple channels combined so that they seem like a single broadband channel. On the meta-level computer clusters make all of the above. Sometimes there are networks file Systems Abstracted data warehouses on which they are built, for example, VMware VMFS, Solaris / OpenSolaris ZFS, NetApp Wafl

Virtualization of applications

Advantages:

isolation of application execution: no incompatibility and conflicts;
every time in the original form: the registry is not clogged, there are no configuration files - it is necessary for the server;
smaller resourceport compared to the emulation of the entire OS.

Notes

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Watch what is "virtualization" in other dictionaries:

virtualization - In the writings of the SNIA Association, the following general definition is given. "Virtualization is an action (ACT) to combine multiple devices, services or functions of the internal component of the infrastructure (Back end) with additional external (Front ... ... ...

virtualization - separation of the physical level of the network (location and connection of devices) from its logical level (working groups and users). Setting the network configuration in logical criteria instead of physical. ... Technical translator directory

Network Virtualization The process of combining hardware and software network resources in one virtual Network. The network virtualization is divided into external, that is, connecting many networks into one virtual, and the inner, creating ... ... Wikipedia