MS Virtualization Overview

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VIRTUALIZATION FOR WINDOWS: A TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

Contents

UNDERSTANDING VIRTUALIZATION ................................................................................1

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Hardware Virtualization ............................................................................................................................................3 Presentation Virtualization .........................................................................................................................................4 Application Virtualization ..........................................................................................................................................6 Other Virtualization Technologies ...............................................................................................................................8

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MICROSOFT VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES ..............................................................11

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Virtual Server 2005 R2 ............................................................................................................................................12Virtual PC 2007 ......................................................................................................................................................13 Looking Ahead: Windows Server Virtualization .........................................................................................................13

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Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services ...................................................................................................................16 Looking Ahead: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services ...........................................................................................17

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MANAGING A VIRTUALIZED WINDOWS ENVIRONMENT ..................................................22

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COMBINING VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES ...............................................................28

Understanding Virtualization

Virtualization is unquestionably one of the hottest trends in informationtechnology today. This is no accident. While a variety of technologiesfall under the virtualization umbrella, all of them are changing the ITworld in significant ways. This overview introduces Microsoft’s virtualization technologies,focusing on three areas: hardware virtualization, presentationvirtualization, and application virtualization. Since every technology,virtual or otherwise, must be effectively managed, this discussion alsolooks at Microsoft’s management products for a virtual world. The goalis to make clear what these offerings do, describe a bit about how theydo it, and show how they work together.

Virtualization Technologies

To understand modern virtualization technologies, think first about asystem without them. Imagine, for example, an application such as

Microsoft Word running on a standalone desktop computer. Figure 1shows how this looks.Figure 1: A system without virtualization The application is installed and runs directly on the operating system,which in turn runs directly on the computer’s hardware. Theapplication’s user interface is presented via a display that’s directlyattached to this machine. This simple scenario is familiar to anybodywho’s ever used Windows.But it’s not the only choice. In fact, it’s often not the best choice.Rather than locking these various parts together—the operatingsystem to the hardware, the application to the operating system, andthe user interface to the local machine—it’s possible to loosen thedirect reliance these parts have on each other.Doing this means virtualizing aspects of this environment, somethingthat can be done in various ways. The operating system can bedecoupled from the physical hardware it runs on using

hardwarevirtualization

, for example, while

application virtualization

allows ananalogous decoupling between the operating system and theapplications that use it. Similarly,

presentation virtualization

allowsseparating an application’s user interface from the physical machinethe application runs on. All of these approaches to virtualization helpmake the links between components less rigid. This lets hardware andsoftware be used in more diverse ways, and it also makes both easierto change. Given that most IT professionals spend most of their timeworking with what’s already installed rather than rolling out newdeployments, making their world more malleable is a good thing.

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Each type of virtualization also brings other benefits specific to theproblem it addresses. Understanding what these are requires knowingmore about the technologies themselves. Accordingly, the nextsections take a closer look at each one.

Hardware Virtualization

For most IT people today, the word “virtualization” conjures upthoughts of running multiple operating systems on a single physicalmachine. This is hardware virtualization, and while it’s not the onlyimportant kind of virtualization, it is unquestionably the most visibletoday. The core idea of hardware virtualization is simple: Use software tocreate a

virtual machine (VM)

that emulates a physical computer. Byproviding multiple VMs at once, this approach allows running severaloperating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine. Figure2 shows how this looks.Figure 2: Illustrating hardware virtualizationWhen used on client machines, this approach is often called

desktop

virtualization, while using it on server systems is known as

server

virtualization. Desktop virtualization can be useful in a variety of situations. One of the most common is to deal with incompatibilitybetween applications and desktop operating systems. For example,suppose a user running Windows Vista needs to use an application thatruns only on Windows XP with Service Pack 2. By creating a VM thatruns this older operating system, then installing the application in thatVM, this problem can be solved.

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