2Virtualization is the partitioning of computer resources and isolating virtualmachines to simulate multiple independent machines within one physical computer. Theconcept of virtualization began in the 1960s with IBM. This technology was used tologically partition mainframe computers to allow for multitasking to occur. This allowedfor multiple tasks to be performed at the same time, allowing for greater productivity andusage of resources. Since mainframes were very expensive at the time this was essentialin the computing world. Virtualization was rarely used in the 1980s and in the early1990s with the growing popularity of distributed computing. In the late 1990s VMwareand several other companies redeveloped virtualization to cope and solve some of the problems introduced by distributed computing. These problems include disaster protection, high maintenance costs, and low infrastructure utilization.The current state of virtualization differs a lot from previous implementations of it. Currently there are three types of virtualization: full, para-virtualization, and OS level.Full virtualization implements virtualization by using software that creates a layer between the operating system being virtualized and the hardware that it is running on. Anadvantage of full virtualization is that it allows the ability to run almost any operatingsystem on the hardware, but it creates a very processor intensive environment. It alsoallows for all of the software running within the virtual environment to be completelyindependent from the hardware layer. Each virtual machine running within the virtualenvironment is completely isolated from other virtual machines running on the samehardware.Para-virtualization uses a modified OS that knows that it is running in a virtualstate and works together with the software layer in order to make calls to the hardware.
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