Understanding virtualization terms

Bare-metal server
A bare-metal server is a physical server that you could touch and it has no operating
system. So you probably going to get a physical server, which you will have to rack and
stack in your data Centre, and then you will install the operating system on it.

Hypervisor.
Hypervisor is a virtualization software which is installed on that bare-metal server to
make it a virtual server. That hypervisor server also referred to as a host or a virtual
server. In VMware, that hypervisor is referred to as an ESXi server.

Virtual machine,
A virtual machine in short a VM. It is also referred to as a guest or an instance. A virtual
machine is a machine that runs on top of that hypervisor. The hypervisor, since it is
referred to as a host, it is hosting the virtual guest.

Virtualization manager.
The virtualization manager is the console or a managing tool that manages the
hypervisor and virtual machine.
In VMware, it is called a vCenter.
In Oracle world, it is called OVM Manager or Oracle Virtual Manager.

Virtual desktop
Virtual desktop, which in short is a VDI. You're going to hear that a lot because a lot of
corporate employees are nowadays using a virtual desktop, which is given to them by
their IT team, which they could access from anywhere. So if you have a laptop and you
need to work on something, you have to carry that laptop, right? But in virtual desktop,
you could go on any laptop. And if you have your access to your corporate
environment, then you could access your VDI session. And that will look exactly the
same every time you access it. It is your own given environment.

P2V
P2V, which is physical to virtual. A physical to virtual is something that you could
take the physical server and you virtualize it. Now, a lot of companies are moving from
physical to virtual. They have a lot of their operating system or applications running on
physical system. So what they are doing is they are virtualizing it. So you probably going
to hear a data center migration. In data center migration, one of the things that you
would have to do is physical to virtual migration.
V2V, virtual to virtual migration.
How does it happen is if you have an older version of virtualization software running on
your virtual machine, you can upgrade it by going through V2V.

VM template. One of the greatest features of virtualization is VM template. When you

create a VM template, you could actually create or spin a lot of other virtualization
machines from VM template because you have a template built on it now.

Snapshot
Snapshot is just like a backup but it's not exactly a backup it takes a snapshot of your
virtual machine right at the moment if you're taking it right now. And for example, a
month from now, if you wanted to come back and revert back to that same snapshot,
you could do that with a few clicks.

Clone or cloning.
Clone is if you have a virtual machine, you could simply copy and paste the exact
same virtual machine you have running, which is very, very hard to do in a physical
system. So it becomes a lot easier when you have a virtual machine.

Advantages of virtualization

The very first one is the cost.

when you do not have to buy so much computer hardware or other computers to rack
and stack them and you're going to have your computers being virtualized, then the
very first thing that you will have is the savings. The cost will go down
significantly. That's why a lot of corporate environments, a lot of corporate
companies, are moving from physical systems to virtualization.

Then we have real estate.

When we talk about real estate meaning when you have a lesser number of computer
hardware, then of course you'd need a smaller space to rack and stack them. Compared
to having 10 physical servers, you could have one physical server with their required
resources and then you could run 10 and different virtual machines on it. That's when
you're going to save a lot of money on real estate.

Then comes the electricity.

Once again, same thing. If you have 10 physical computers running as compared to one
physical computer, now you do the math. Your electricity bill will go down significantly.
Then comes the ease of management.
When you have all the servers in one single pane of glass, you can manage and access
all your computers, your virtual machines, from one console. And that console is the
management tool or management kind of engine that's provided by the virtualization
software layer.

Then we have the redundancy, meaning lesser downtime.

When we have a virtual machine running on one hypervisor, we could create a
cluster. We could create a copy, a backup copy, of a virtual machine. So let's say if you
have a physical computer. That physical computer, somehow it crashes. Now, you need
downtime. You need to have a technician on site to replace either CPU,
hardware, motherboard or whatever the issue is. With virtualization, if you are having a
problem with the virtual machine, all you have to do is create a new virtual machine or
revert back to its snapshot time when you took the snapshot.

Then faster deployment of machines.

Compared to the physical machine, let's say you have a newer physical machine in your
data center. You get it, you racked it. You install the operating system on it. Then you
install the application. You go through all the configuration, set up those virtual
machines and then you run it. But with virtual machines, when you have a virtual
machine template, all you have to do is simply few clicks and you will have a brand new
virtual machine up and running in a no time.

Then comes the resource availability.

Resources are something that is inside of your computer. If you have a physical
machine, the CPU, the memory, the hard disk and all the peripherals inside of your
computer are the resources. So if you have a database administrator in your
organization and he comes to you and asks you for more hard disk, then you have very
limited resources in a physical box to add hard disk and give it to that person. Whereas
in virtualization, if you wanted to give 20 gig, 30 gig or 500 gig or whatever that you
have available, you could actually add those resources on the fly. Plus if you have a
virtual machine running and its application requirement has increased and you want to
add additional four gig of memory, you could add that on the fly. It's called hot
add. Whereas in physical system, it is very hard to add the resources on the fly. You
would actually have to open up your physical computer, add memory dims inside of
your computer then start up your computer. Takes a lot of time. Or in some cases, you
might have to replace the entire physical hardware to get the resources available or
resources that are needed for your application. Now with virtualization, that has become
so easier. All you have to do is simply with a few clicks, you add resources to your virtual
machine based on the requirement.

Then comes better testing and performance.

Virtualization has changed that significantly especially for developers or software
programmers and engineers. They build the programs, applications. They write
code. Then they test the code. If the code is not working for them, they could change
the code, go back for it. Now if they are doing that on a physical machine and they're
changing the code, it is very hard for them to revert back to the original code. With
virtualization, let's say if you're writing the first version of the code, you could take a
snapshot of your virtual machine right at that point. Then you make changes as you go
on. And if you have to come back to the version 1.0, all you have to do is revert back to
that snapshot. That's what is better testing and performance as one of the great features
of virtualization.

Then we have licensing.

Of course when you're going to have a 50 physical machines, you are going to have to
pay for 50 physical machine support. You're going to pay for operating system
support for every 50 physical machines that are running and application licensing
costs. When you are consolidating all of that into virtualized machines, then you have to
pay as per the CPU. A lot of companies now licensing their products based on the CPU
you are running on your hardware. And that is directly related to the cost. The very first
bullet point that we have on this video, it will save you huge significantly on the
licensing cost. And of course the management piece of it, you don't have to deal with so
much licensing and manage those licensing in order to keep the operating system
applications and whatever the licensing that you need. So here are the few advantages
of virtualizations and I am sure there are a lot more than that, but few of them that I
know that I have been working for so long. I could tell right away, these are the few
advantages that virtualization is a lot better than having a physical machine.

Lab design and prerequisites

computer hardware which is bare metal and with no operating system.

Minimum requirement of

Ram four gig, two CPU, and disc of at least 200 gig. Then what you will do, you will install the
virtualization hypervisor. In VMware it is called ESXi and the version you can install, seven which
is the most recent latest one at this time. For that hypervisor, the requirement is the Ram should
be at least four gig, at least two CPU, the disc requirement is at least 200 gig. Now please note
up to 138 gig that is given to the hypervisor is dedicated for ESXi only. You cannot use the entire
200 gig. If you give it to the virtual hypervisor, you cannot give that for the virtual
machines. Why? The reason is that, the virtualization hypervisor ESXi 7.O version up to 138 gig
of storage will be utilized for ESXi, for VMware Tools locker, core dump and scratch partition. So
if you are setting up 100 gig for the virtualization hypervisor, you are not going to see the
storage at all. So it's better you dedicate at least 200 gig. You could also attach external storage
as well. Anyway, once you have that virtualization layer Software installed just as if you would
install an operating system on a computer, then you could go and spin up your virtual machines
directly on your virtualization hypervisor. The virtual machines could be either Windows, Linux or
any of your own choice. Now for you to access that virtualization hypervisor layer, all you need is
another computer with a browser and then you will access it by entering the IP address of that
hypervisor. Now that's an ideal world. In a corporate world, that's how a Hypervisor vSphere
Hypervisor is installed and set up. Now we are going to talk about our home
environment because in our home environment, we do not have enough resources to spare. We
do not have a hardware laying around or additional resources that we could use. So we have to
use what we have with limited resources. So for our home environment or in this entire
course, our Lab, what we will do, is we will have our own computer. Meaning if you have a
laptop, if you have your personal computer, anything that you have that you use, you could use
that to set up your VMware Lab. How it's going to work is of course your laptop, for
example has an minimum of four gig Ram which I'm sure everyone nowadays have a four gig. I
would recommend at least eight gig but let's say if you have minimum of four gig. You got to
have at least two CPU and disc space for your laptop or a PC that you're using should be at least
a 100 gig free. Then you have an operating system running on your laptop, right? And that
operating system could be either Windows, or Linux, or Mac. Now with that setup, I'm sure every
one of you has this setup at your home. Then what we will do on top of that operating
system, we will install some kind of virtualization software, a smaller virtualization software. So
the reason we do that is because we don't have to remove the operating system from our
computer. So what we will do is we will install virtualization software and that virtualization
software is the VMware Workstation Player. Or you could use another virtualization software by
Oracle, it's called Oracle VirtualBox. For those of you who has Mac M1 chip computers, you
might not be able to install Workstation Player or Oracle VirtualBox. You would have to install
UTM software which also provides you the Virtualization Layer over your Mac computer. Once
you have that Virtualization Software installed, then we will install the Virtualization Hypervisor
ESXi version 7.O. And this will be or it's called a Nested Environment. Meaning Hypervisor within
an Hypervisor. The reason we are doing that is because once again we have limited
resources. So whatever we have, we have to work through it. So we will install that Virtualization
Hypervisor. And please keep in mind that Virtualization Software is given to you only for sixty
days. That's a sixty days evaluation, after that some of the functionality will not work. So my
preference is that you finish the course within sixty days. Now for this Virtualization
Hypervisor once again, the requirement is four gig of Ram minimum, CPU two at least, ESXi disk
space requirement is 200 gig. Once again out of that 200 gig, up to 138 gig is reserved for its
own ESXi tools. If we are signing 200 gig, we will be given only 60 or 70 gig available for our
Virtual Machines that we will be creating on top of that Virtualization Layer. You could also
attach additional storage if you have let's say a flash drive or external storage you could create a
new data store, which you we will cover later on, but for now please pay close attention right
here. This box is the Lab Design we will be following for this course.