Virtualization In Cloud Computing

A Cloud Server is one of the most widely used way of hosting applications online right now and day by day the number is increasing because a lot of IT workload is being shifted from on-premise to cloud.

Virtualization in cloud computing is the process of making a software-based, virtual platform such as virtual applications, servers, storage and networks. It is the single most effective way to reduce IT expenses while boosting efficiency and agility for all size businesses. It helps the user by providing multiple machines at the same time it also allows sharing single physical instance of resources or an application to multiple users.

Cloud Virtualizations also manage the workload by transforming traditional computing and make it more scalable, economical and efficient.

What are Hypervisors:

A hypervisor provides the foundation for your virtualization platform. It is a piece of software or firmware also known as virtual machine monitor (VMM) that creates and run virtual machine. The hypervisor treats resources like CPU, memory, and storage a pool that can be easily reallocated between existing guests or to new virtual machines. The physical hardware, when used as a hypervisor, is called the host, while the many VMs that use its resources are guests.

There are 2 types of Hypervisors:

1. Type-1 Hypervisor (Base Metal)

2. Type-2 Hypervisor (Hosted Hypervisor)

Type-1 Hypervisor:

This type is also known as bare metal hypervisor which runs directly on the system hardware. A guest operating system runs on another level above the hypervisor. It takes the place of a host operating system and VM resources are scheduled directly to the hardware by the hypervisor.

VMware ESXI is a Type-1 hypervisor that runs on the host server hardware without an underlying OS. EXSI provides a virtualization layer that abstracts the CPU, storage, memory and networking resources of the physical host into multiple virtual machine. This type of Hypervisor is considered to be the best performing and most efficient for enterprise computing.

Type-2 Hypervisor:

Type-2 Hypervisor also referred to s hosted type that runs within a conventional OS environment , and the host OS provides. It does not have direct access to the host hardware and resources.

Example of Type-2 hypervisor are VMware Workstation, Oracle VirtualBox, Microsoft virtual pc.

The main difference between Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors is that Type 2 hypervisors are typically installed on an existing Operating System. This makes it a hosted hypervisor, and typically used for testing and learning.

Oracle VirtualBox

Oracle VirtualBox is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor for virtualization. In other words, it allows you to install many operating system virtually on your host operating system. So if I want to install Ubuntu operating system virtually on my windows operating system I can do that using VirtualBox.