Virtualization

By: Ketansingh Thakur

Abstract

Over past years, IT complexity has grown while efficiency promoted; Virtualization reverses this track simplifying IT infrastructure, improving efficiency by performing more with less effort. Virtualization lets the application run in a few physical servers where each App operates in a separate container called a virtual machine. VM is entirely isolated, but computer resources like processor, storage, and networking are shared among running Apps and delivered dynamically through software called a hypervisor; it allows every application to get what it needs from machine resources. Without service running at full capacity, the user does not require many virtual machines depending on the demand, which can get higher value by improving performance, lower cost, less complexity, and faster maintenance.

Introduction

Virtualization changed the old way of a single server, and application model, in which most servers are vastly underutilized with westing costs. Virtualization empowers a single server to work as numerous VMs with each virtual machine able to function in several situations, such as Windows, Linux, or Apache. As a result, organizations that have adopted Virtualization have been able to solidify multiple servers onto fewer physical gadgets, which makes a difference decrease space, power, and regulatory prerequisites (VMWare, 2015). One way of implementing Virtualization is through cloud computing, such as AWS, which offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Amazon AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments on a metered pay-as-you-go basis, which become very popular in recent years. EC2 is one of the most famous of AWS offering renting a virtual machine, with capabilities to store data on virtual drives through Elastic Block Store EBS and to distribute load across machines by Elastic Load Balance ELB.

1. Understand the organization environment

One obvious question before starting change-over the organization infrastructure is moving to cloud computing makes sense for the business and current environments. The answer to this question required an in-depth investigation of current organization environments before deciding which direction is better for the organization.. Virtualization requires a considerable sum of thought and a well planned to find out all factors to evaluate its preparedness for Virtualization. In some cases, it may be better for the organization to keep the infrastructure as it is without change (Barry, 2020).

2. Windows licensing for virtualized environments

Windows Server has the option of running Windows Server in VMs on Azure for customers with

Software Assurance coverage on their Windows Server licenses is eligible for Azure Hybrid

Benefits. Support use of up to two VMs per sixteen qualifying Windows Server licenses.

Windows gives the customers a license to allocate up to sixteen Windows Server cores to Azure

Moreover, run a single VM instance with cores between one and sixteen Windows Server core licenses to Azure. Alternatively, they can allocate a set of sixteen core licenses and run two separate VMs, each with several virtual cores between one and eight. In case customers need more

Cores to run more massive VMs, additional costs required for their Azure base instance (Microsoft, 2017).

3. Configuration for shared storage

AWS provides architecture diagrams for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) best practices; Figure 1 shows one example supplied by AWS Whitepapers and Guides of high availability architecture that complained to different components of AWS services. At Step 1, the system admin specifies the required parameters for AWS services and launch the AWS CloudFormation stack, which used for gathering scripts to bootstrap from different parties, which starts several nested stacks. At Step 2, EC2 instance run in multiple Availability AZ Zones, or user can choose to run auto-scaling group ASG which offer automatic scaling based on the workload without user provision. At Step

3, the admin can select which storages according to application requirements (EFS, S3). At Step 4, admin can monitor and submit jobs. At Step 5, lunch workstation with remote desktops and application streaming NICE DCV, which allows sending batch jobs. At step 6, system security stack, including AWS Secrets Manager, AWS, Certificate Manager, Security Groups, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). At Step 7, admin can launch AWS Lambda serverless computing using any programming language without provision; only developers care about the code logic. At Step 8, admin can run Amazon Elastic Search Service used for analytics logs and using visualization. At Step 9, Elastic Load Balancing to ensure high availability across Availability Zones. (Amazon AWS, 2019).

4. Windows Azure

Azure Virtual Machines (VM) is an on-demand service, scalable computing resources. An Azure VM gives the adaptability of Virtualization without having to purchase and keep up the physical equipment that runs it. Some use-cases for Azure virtual machines are development and test, Applications in the cloud, and Extended datacentre. All Azure resources distributed over numerous geographical regions around the world. As a rule, the region is called a location for VM. The user subscription has a default 20 VMs per region quota limits (Microsoft, 2019).

5. Hybrid Cloud Overview

According to the Microsoft definition, “A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines an open cloud and a private cloud by permitting information sharing between them” (2010). When computing and preparing request changes, hybrid cloud computing gives businesses the capacity to consistently scale their on-premises framework up to the open cloud to handle any data follow (Microsoft, 2010).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Virtualization offers many benefits; AWS and Azure provide excellent options for infrastructure needs for cloud computing that provides flexibility and high availability based OnDemand. The critical point is investigating current organization environments before deciding the change-over, which required more careful considerations and proper synchronization between all stakeholders.