Analysis and Implementation of Virtualization in Cloud Computing
Ahimsa Bhardwaj Preeti Sirohi
IMS Ghaziabad
Ahimsa.bharadwaj@imsgzb.com
Abstract— Cloud technology comprised of using a networked
infrastructure, platform and software with the capacity for providing
an on-demand resources to the customer. Virtualization is an
important technology for cloud environment as it provide users the
ability to allocate and de-allocate the resources, computation power,
storage space as per the user requirement. The cloud resources can be
taken by the user from any cloud service provider on pay as you go
cost model.
Keywords— Virtualization; Cloud Computing
I. INTRODUCTION
“Cloud computing is the use of networked infrastructure
software and capacity to provide resources to users in an on-
demand environment. Sometimes known as utility computing,
clouds provide a set of typically virtualized computers which
can provide users with the ability to start and stop servers or
use compute cycles only when needed, often paying only upon
usage.”[1]
Cloud Computing Characteristics:
Cloud computing provides various features which make it
different from traditional service computing, the features are
summarized below:
On-demand self service. Cloud provides users services as per
the need of clients. The payment of the services is done by
using “pay-and-go” method. Just like we pay our electric bills
according to usage here we need to pay only for the services
which we had used.
Multi-tenancy: Cloud supports multi-tenancy approach i.e this
approach is helpful when multiple clients wanted to avail the
services that are co-located in the single data centre. Multi-
tenancy models should have policies for isolation, security and
separation.
Shared resource pooling: The concept of cloud computing is
based upon sharing of resources .Cloud providers like
Cisco, Citrix, Google, IBM (SoftLayer), Oracle, Microsoft
(Azure), and SAP, Rackspace, and Verizon (which acquired
IMS Ghaziabad
preeti.sirohi@imsgzb.com
Terremark) In cloud computing the cloud provider offers
sharing of resources like infrastructure and software to its
consumers. Resource allocation method is dynamic and
flexible which fulfill the demands and release of services to
clients at any point of time. [1].
Ubiquitous network access: The service in cloud environment
is accessible through internet. The devices which have internet
connection can easily access the services of cloud. Also there
are number of data centers across the globe facilitating the
cloud service provider to take advantage by achieving
maximum service utility.
Service oriented: Cloud computing has service oriented
architecture where Service Level Agreement plays an
important role. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS provide its services
according to SLA agreed between the provider and the
consumers .
Scalability: Cloud consumer can store their data to cloud
without worrying about the space and backing up of data.
Resources can be allocated and de allocated according to
demand. The dynamic resource management features of cloud
technology makes it unique from traditional computing
models. Users can request the services and resources
whenever they are required .
Utility-based pricing: Cloud computing is based on pay per-
use pricing model. User only need to pay for the services
used .The pricing scheme of services depends upon the type of
services.Utility based pricing reduces the total service cost by
charging customers on a per-use basis. Various cloud
providers reduce the unnecessary cost on the resource
consumption [1].
II. RELATED LITERATURE
In this era of competition we need customized cloud which
cater to individual needs Cloud can be of different types like
internal and private, or a hybrid cloud that combines both.
Cloud is pool of resources which can be scaled up and down
according to the requirements of the clients.
Virtualization is the essential for cloud computing. VMware is
leader in virtualization powers your cloud infrastructure
providing different platforms to build and run robust cloud
applications, and supplying end-users cloud-based services.
[3]
As x86 virtualization [3] has become established and cloud
computing emerges, a robust IT infrastructure actually
matters more than ever. Today many IT organizations trying
to improve themselves from consolidated simple server to
virtualized tier-1[4] applications. They were also looking
forward to include cloud infrastructure designs in their IT
strategies so that the need for complete, bullet-proof
availability increases for high-performance, high-density or
mission-critical services and applications.By the use of server
with fault tolerance characteristic improves the performance
increases drastically and it becomes difficult to breach.
Using fault-tolerant server hardware hardens against new
vulnerabilities and complements the resilience you can
achieve with virtualization and cloud computing.
III. BENEFITS OF VIRTUALIZATION
Virtualization products include VMware Player, VMware
Server, VirtualBox[5]. These products offer the desktop user a
simple and powerful way of encapsulating entire operating
systems as guest machines for the purpose of study, testing
etc. The only downside of these products is that they are rather
big, take lots of resources, mainly RAM and hard disk space.
Different ways to utilize precious and limited resources to
the maximum, without making complex changes to your
environment. []
1) Virtualization makes your machines faster by placing
them on non-OS hard disk
If you only have a single hard disk, your virtual machines
will run more slowly because the hard disk will have to
access both your real OS and the guest OS files
simultaneously. Placing virtual machines on the second /
third hard disk will significantly increase performance. [6]
2) Solve limited hard disk space; place virtual machines
on external disks
Virtual machines can easily take 4-6GB or more. Having tens
of virtual machines on your hard disk can eat valuable space
that you might not be able to afford to spare for this task.
Using external hard disks serves many purposes.
 First, you will be able to free your internal hard disk
space for other stuff.
 Second, you will solve the performance issue
mentioned before.
 Third, you add a layer of mobility that allows you to
take your virtual machines with you (virtual
machines are just files).
 Fourth, you will reduce the fragmentation and wear
on internal hard disks.
External hard disks also solve any scalability issues you might
have. Any time you need more space, you simply add another
external hard disk. Without meddling internal layout . They
can be easily switched, upgraded, ported, moved about
without touching the productivity setup[7].
3) Use remote connectivity to solve physical network
layout complexity
Both Virtual Box and VMware support remote connections.
This means that you can run virtual machines located on a
separate machine without any physical access to that machine,
save a network connection [8].
4) Split virtual machines into smaller files for easier
portability
Virtual machines are files. We can split them into smaller
segments to make them more easily portable[9].
5) Pre-allocate disk space to reduce fragmentation, disk
access times
Virtual hard disk fragmentation restrict contiguous
segmentation which reducing future fragmentation and thus,
disk access times. Thus pre allocation of disk space is not a
good idea if virtual machines are large. But the pre-allocation
benefits both the host and the virtual machines. They will not
have to fight one another for space as virtual machines change
dynamically with use over time, improving performance[10].
IV VIRTUALIZATION ISSUES
1) Single Points of Failure
If a number of virtual machines are migrated to a single
physical server like in cloud environment according to the
client this can lead to single point of failure. Thus this
flexibility can introduce single points of failure when too
many of the virtual machines that support a particular service
or application are concentrated on the same physical server.
Close attention must be paid to how many virtual machines
reside on a physical server, and which virtual machines are
placed on which physical server(s)[11].
 2) I/O and Scalability Limitations
In virtualized and cloud environments virtual resources have
to be mapped to physical resources, including the physical
server’s buses, I/O adapters and disks. I/O and scalability
concerns increase when a virtualization or cloud solution uses
software lock stepping to provide high availability or
software-based fault tolerance. Which imposes additional
overhead on the CPU, network[11].
3) Failover and Fault Isolation
As mentioned earlier, virtualization software enables failover:
the ability to transfer processing from one virtual machine to
another virtual machine on a different server in the event of a
hardware or application failure (and during scheduled
maintenance). Storage capacity may be virtualized as well.
Virtualization and cloud software solutions on the market
today cannot isolate and then determine the root cause of a
hardware or software failure. Even though failover is
provided for, the cause of the failure may be propagated to
the secondary virtual machine. That allows the same failure
to repeat along with the same threats of downtime and data
corruption. In addition, finding and resolving the cause of a
failure within a virtualization software stack poses a
challenge due to the increased software complexity and a lack
of self-diagnostics.
4) Data Integrity
Virtualization or cloud software alone do not provide the
complete protection required. Avoiding a “split-brain”
condition is crucial to preventing data corruption as well.
Split brain occurs when a server or servers go down;
they reboot or restart; and each virtual machine believes
itself to be the primary VM. Selecting a virtualization
solution that prevents split brain is good practice
anytime you plan to provide redundancy by using
multiple physical servers and network paths in a
virtualized or cloud setup[12].
[3] Adams, Keith, and Ole Agesen. "A comparison of software
and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization." ACM SIGOPS
Operating Systems Review 40.5 (2006): 2-13.
[4] Bi, Jing, et al. "Dynamic provisioning modeling for
virtualized multi-tier applications in cloud data center." Cloud
Computing (CLOUD), 2010 IEEE 3rd international conference
on. IEEE, 2010.
[5] Li, Peng. "Selecting and using virtualization solutions: our
experiences with VMware and VirtualBox." Journal of
Computing Sciences in Colleges 25.3 (2010): 11-17.
[6]Shields, Greg. The Shortcut Guide to Implementing
Virtualization in the Small Environment. Realtimepublishers.
com, 2009.
[7] Gupta, Karan, et al. "GPFS-SNC: An enterprise storage
framework for virtual-machine clouds." IBM Journal of
Research and Development 55.6 (2011): 2-1.
[8]Zhang, Qi, Lu Cheng, and Raouf Boutaba. "Cloud
computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges." Journal
of internet services and applications 1.1 (2010): 7-18.
[9] Bernstein, David, et al. "Blueprint for the intercloud-
protocols and formats for cloud computing
interoperability." Internet and Web Applications and Services,
2009. ICIW'09. Fourth International Conference on. IEEE,
2009.
[10]Gokhale, Parag, and Michael F. Klose. "Systems and
methods of data storage management, such as pre-allocation
of storage space." U.S. Patent No. 7,831,766. 9 Nov. 2010.
[11] Rimal, Bhaskar Prasad, Eunmi Choi, and Ian Lumb. "A
Taxonomy and Survey of Cloud Computing Systems." NCM 9
(2009): 44-51.
[12] Chen, Deyan, and Hong Zhao. "Data security and privacy
protection issues in cloud computing." Computer Science and
Electronics Engineering (ICCSEE), 2012 International
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V CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

The paper presents briefly the concepts of cloud computing

and the characteristics of the cloud environment.
Virtualization which is the main technology behind cloud
computing is discussed in the paper. The benefits of
virtualization is also discussed. The limitations is briefly
explained and will opens the scope of future research in the
area of virtualization in cloud computing

VI. REFERENCES
[1]Mell, Peter, and Tim Grance. "The NIST definition of
cloud computing." (2011).

[2] Xing, Yuping, and Yongzhao Zhan. "Virtualization and

cloud computing." Future Wireless Networks and Information
Systems (2012): 305-312.