VIRTUALIZATION Virtualization is "a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources".

Another definition, also from Wikipedia is "a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources". Virtualization, in computing, is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources.[1] Virtualization is software technology which uses a physical resource such as a server and divides it up into virtual resources called virtual machines (VM's). Virtualization allows users to consolidate physical resources, simplify deployment and administration, and reduce power and cooling requirements. While virtualization technology is most popular in the server world, virtualization technology is also being used in data storage such as Storage Area Networks, and inside of operating systems such as Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V. Virtualization Advantages:

Server consolidation Reduced power and cooling Green computing Ease of deployment and administration High availability and disaster recovery

Virtualization is a massively growing aspect of computing and IT. Virtualization has been around for many years in some form or other, the most common usage being hard drive partitioning on a home PC. It essentially means creating a new virtual version of something, rather than a real version. The disc partition example is the perfect way to understand virtualization, as you are essentially taking one hard drive and splitting it in two, with the second partition being a virtual partition. The main two competing pieces of software that are used for virtualization tasks are Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare, both of which have their merits and there is much debate over which is best. There are three main types of virtualization, all of which carry out important tasks in businesses:

Storage Virtualization
This is where the resources of many different network storage devices such as hard drives are pooled so that it looks like they are all one big vat of storage. This is then managed by a central system that makes it all look much simpler to the network administrators. This is also a great way to keep an eye on resources in a business, as you can then see exactly how much you have left at a given time. It gives the administrator much less hassle when it comes to backups etc. Storage virtualization is an intelligent layer or abstraction that pools storage frommultiple storage devices into a common storage pool. Often part of a storage area network (SAN), virtualized storage appears as one device to the server-operatingsystems and can be centrally managed and provisioned from a single view.

Storage virtualization benefits

The evolution from direct-attached storage (DAS) to SANs resulted from increasing company data loads and the need to add cost-effective storage capacity while stillproviding flexibility for future growth. SANs helped overcome many storage challenges, but also created a new layer of complexity. Storage devices fromdifferent vendors didnt necessarily interoperate well on the SAN. Management could be tedious and require additional resource attention. Needed infrastructure changes were often difficult to implement, and had a high impact on operations. Storage virtualization aims to mask SAN complexity by aggregating multiple storage devices into a common managed virtual storage pool and isolating servers from the physical storage. Storage virtualization can enable customers to: Add a storage device without requiring server and network reconfiguration Remove and change storage-volume definition and assignment from onestorage device to another to help meet service-level requirements Aggregate hard disk drives of different speeds and sizes, and from different vendors Dynamically reallocate storage space. For example, virtualization allows a server requiring additional storage to find unused space on another storage device. Conversely, a server requiring less storage reallocates the space back into the storage pool.

Network Virtualization

Server virtualization and storage virtualization have been around for years, allowing additional workloads to operate on existing devices, or pooling and provisioning resources without regard for their physical locations. But virtualization has moved beyond servers and storage systems, extending across the network and reaching all the way to user endpoints. Network virtualization is a process of abstraction which separates logical network behavior from the underlying physical network resources. Network virtualization allows network aggregation and provisioning, combining different physical networks into a single virtual network, or breaking a physical network into multiple virtual networks that are isolated from each other. This is sometimes called "external network virtualization." Network virtualization can also be applied within virtual servers to create synthetic networks between virtual machines (VMs); this is often dubbed "internal network virtualization." Network Virtualization is when all of the separate resources of a network are combined, allowing the network administrator to share them out amongst the users of the network. This is done by splitting the resources bandwidth into channels and allowing the administrator to assign these resources as and when required. This allows each user to access all of the network resources from their computer. This can be files and folders on the computer, printers or hard drives etc. This streamlined approach makes the life of the network administrator much easier, and it makes the system seem much less complicated to the human eye than it really is. Network virtualization lends itself to cost savings, efficiency, security and flexibility -- four key benefits for any client. "The whole point of everything we're doing with virtualization is to get more utilization out of hardware," Suppose that the client required a separate network for iSCSI traffic, application development or some other business purpose. Traditionally this would require the creation (and expense) of a different physical network, but network virtualization would allow a new logical network to be created and configured using the same physical hardware. The new network could be isolated from other virtual networks even though it's using the same physical cables, switches, routers and other devices. This ensures security between virtual networks. Further, the new network could be created, configured and managed with few (if any) changes to the physical network.

Server Virtualization
This is the main area of virtualization, whereby a number of virtual machines are created on one server meaning that multiple tasks can then be assigned to the one server, saving on processing power, cost and space. This means that any network tasks that are happening on

the server still appear to be on a separate space, so that any errors can be diagnosed and fixed quickly. Server virtualization inserts a layer of abstraction between the physical server hardware and the software that runs on the server. The physical machine is translated into one or more virtual machines (VMs). Each VM runs its own operating system and applications, and each utilizes some allocated portion of the server's processing resources such as CPU, memory, network access and storage I/O. The primary advantage with server virtualization is improved server utilization. Rather than deploying numerous servers that may not be fully utilized. With those definitions as our background, what is server virtualization? Simply put, server virtualization software allows you to run multiple guest computers on a single host computer with those guest computers believing they are running on their own hardware. By doing this, you gain all the benefits of any type of virtualization: portability of guest virtual machines, reduced operating costs, reduced administrative overhead, server consolidation, testing & training, disaster recovery benefits, and more. Examples of server virtualization products are:

VMware Server, Workstation, Player, and ESX Server Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server Xen Virtual Iron And more

That said, different products provide different levels of virtualization. There are:

full virtualization - guest OS is unmodified and believes it is running on the same hardware as the host OS para virtualization - guest OS is modified, as with Xen emulation - guest OS is unmodified but it is running on a software emulated CPU

Here is what Server Virtualization looks like: