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VIRTULAISATION AND CONTAINERS

Module I

Dr. Anoopkumar M

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1 Introduction

1.1 Physical and virtual machines

1.2 Traditional and virtual computing

1.3 Understanding virtualisation

1.4 Need, Applications and Limitations of virtualisation

Contents
1.5 Simulations and Emulations
Module 1
1.6 Challenges in Virtualized environment

1.7 Tools and technologies in virtualized environments

1.8 Types of Hypervisors

1.9 Hypervisor architecture

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Physical Server?
 A physical server is a hardware you can touch and feel. A typical server is sometimes
referred to as “bare-metal”.
 A physical server refers to a hardware server with the motherboard, CPU, memory and IO-
controllers. It's considered a bare-metal server because its hardware is used directly by an
OS instead of a virtualization platform.
 A physical server is used to run a single instance of an OS. It runs Windows, Linux or another
OS and, very often, it's used to run a single application.
 Physical servers typically have a CPU, RAM, and some type of internal storage from which the
operating system is loaded and is booted.
 Your physical connections in the datacenter connect to your physical server. This includes
power, network, storage connections, and other peripheral devices and hardware.
 When thinking about bare-metal servers that run a single application, these generally
provide applications and data for a single “tenant”. In simple terms, a tenant is a customer or
consumer. A single tenant is a single instance of the software and supporting infrastructure
that serves a single customer

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Types of Servers
 Even though you may think of a physical server as a “one size fits all” type piece of
hardware, there are all kinds, sizes, and purposes for physical servers.
 Tower Servers – Generally lower cost and less powerful than their rackmount and modular
counterparts. Often found in the edge or small business environments where a server rack may
not be installed or there is no other rackmount equipment to justify purchasing a server rack

 Rackmount Servers – Rackmount servers are the typical servers you think about when
thinking about an enterprise data center environment and are mounted in a standard server
HP Proliant DL580 rack
rackmount server

 HCI or Modular Servers - These types of servers are sometimes known as “blade” servers or
hyper-converged form factors as they typically have the ability to install or scale the
compute, storage, and network by simply installing a new “server blade” or “module” into the
chassis of the HCI/Modular server
Dell PowerEdge MX
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Computer Architecture
 The levels of abstraction in a computer system correspond to implementation layers in
both hardware and software. There is an architecture for each of these implementation
layers. Figure 1 shows some of the important interfaces and implementation layers as
found in a typical computer system.

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Computer Architecture
 In software, for example, there is an interface between an application
program and standard libraries (interface 2 in Figure 1). Another software
interface is at the boundary of the operating system (interface 3). The
interfaces in hardware include an I/O architecture that describes the signals
that drive I/O device controllers (interface 11), a hardware memory
architecture that describes the way addresses are translated (interface 9), an
interface for the memory access signals that leave the processor (interface
12), and another for the signals that reach the DRAM chips in memory
(interface 14). The OS communicates with I/O devices through a sequence
of interfaces: 4, 8, 10, 11, and 13.
 Of these interfaces and architectures, we are most interested in those at or
near the hardware/software boundary. The instruction set architecture
(ISA), which marks the division between hardware and software, is
composed of interfaces 7 and 8 in Figure 1.

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Computer Architecture
 The concept of an ISA was first clearly articulated when the IBM 360 family of
mainframe computers was developed in the early 1960s.
 The IBM 360 series had a number of models that could incorporate a wide range
of hardware resources
 To successfully accomplish this, the interface between the hardware and software
had to be precisely defined and controlled, and the ISA serves this purpose.
 There are two parts of an ISA that are important in the definition of virtual
machines.
 The first part includes those aspects of the ISA that are visible to an application
program. This will be referred to as the user ISA.
 The second part includes those aspects visible to supervisor software, such as the
operating system, which is responsible for managing hardware resources. This is the
system ISA.

 The supervisor software can also employ all the elements of the user ISA. In
Figure 1, interface 7 consists of the user ISA only, and interface 8 consists of both
the user ISA and the system ISA.

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Computer Architecture
 The application binary interface (ABI), which provides a program with access to
the hardware resources and services available in a system, has two major
components.
 The first is the set of all user instructions (interface 7 in Figure 1); system instructions
are not included in the ABI.
 At the ABI level, all application programs interact with the shared hardware resources
indirectly, by invoking the operating system via a system call interface (interface 3 in
Figure 1.4), which is the second component of the ABI.

 System calls provide a specific set of operations that an operating system may
perform on behalf of a user program (after checking to make sure the user
program should be granted its request). The system call interface is typically
implemented via an instruction that transfers control to the operating system in a
manner similar to a procedure or subroutine call, except the call target address is
restricted to a specific address in the operating system.
 Arguments for the system call are typically passed through registers and/or a
stack held in memory, following specific conventions that are part of the system
call interface. A program binary compiled to a specific ABI can run unchanged
only on a system with the same ISA and operating system.
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Computer Architecture
 The application programming interface is usually defined with respect to a high-
level language (HLL). A key element of an API is a standard library (or libraries)
that an application calls to invoke various services available on the system,
including those provided by the operating system.

 An API typically, defined at the source code level, enables applications written to
the API to be ported easily (via recompilation) to any system that supports the
same API. The API specifies an abstraction of the details of implementation of
services, especially those that involve privileged hardware.

 For example, clib is a well-known library that supports the UNIX/C programming
language. The clib API provides a memory model consisting of text (for code)
and a heap and stack (for data). A routine belonging to an API typically contains
one or more ABI-level operating system calls. Some API library routines are
simply wrappers, i.e., code that translates directly from the HLL calling
convention to the binary convention expected by the OS. Other API routines are
more complex and may include several OS calls.
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Virtual server?
 Wrapping your mind around the term virtual machine can be daunting and is often confusing.
This stems from the varying definitions of the term virtual machine. Even the term
virtual brings unpredictability to your understanding if you don’t understand virtual to mean
“essence of” or “properties of.” In short, if a list of specifications is equal to a machine
(think: personal computer), and if software can create the same properties of a machine, you
have a VM.
 A virtual server is a software-based environment that emulates the processes of an actual
computer. While end users won’t be able to tell the difference between a properly set-up
virtual server and a physical server, they’ll actually be interacting with a virtualization of the
computing resources of a physical server.
 A virtual server or virtual machine -- terms used interchangeably here -- is a software-based
representation of a physical server. The function that abstracts CPU, memory, storage and
network resources from the underlying hardware and assigns them to VMs is called a
hypervisor.
 The same resources that support a physical server—RAM and CPUs, for example—all have
software-based counterparts assigned to any given workload operating on a virtual server.
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Virtual server?
 A physical machine can be split up into many VMs, where each has its own purpose,
making it different than the bare-metal example above, where the physical server only
runs one service.
 When set up in this manner, virtual servers allow businesses to more effectively
distribute the resources of physical hardware to ongoing workloads.
 This is because virtual servers, unlike physical servers, can exist alongside one another
in the same physical environment.
 While a physical server is a single-tenant platform with dedicated resources, a
hypervisor can support multiple virtual servers, allowing multiple applications to run
simultaneously and share physical hardware capacity amongst themselves.

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The benefits of virtualization

 Where originally 10 or 15 servers were needed, a single physical server could run 10 or
15 VMs. This is still one of the main advantages of virtualization and consolidation ratios
have increased over the years.
 Another benefit of virtualization is that relocating a VM to different hardware, performing
a restore or DR and failover is much simpler.

 Admins can replace hardware without service interruption and balance workloads on all
available hardware, eliminating bottlenecks.

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comparison of physical and virtual machines

Physical machine Virtual machine
Relocation Difficult to relocate. Easy to relocate.
Requires service downtime. Encapsulated into files.
Specific to physical hardware. Independent of physical hardware.
Management Difficult to manage. Easy to manage.
Hardware failures cause service downtime. Isolated from other virtual machines.
Cost High. Virtualizing physical system saves cost.
Hardware Changes in hardware limit application support. Changes in hardware cannot affect application support.
limitations
Resource sharing This is not supported. Virtualization can share multiple virtual machines on a single
physical host.
Memory usage Operating system assumes that it owns all of the Allow the hypervisor to run multiple virtual machines
physical memory in the system. simultaneously.
Virtual networking This is not supported. A virtual machine can be configured with one or more virtual
Ethernet adapters (vSwitch or dvSwitch).
Filesystems NTFS and ext3. VMFS3 and VMFS5.
Operating system This is a time-consuming task. It is easy to deploy virtual machines from the VM template.
deployment
Backup Use third-party backup software. It is easy to create a VM snapshot or clone the virtual machine.

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Traditional and virtual computing

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comparison of physical and virtual server machines

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Understanding virtualization
 Virtualization is a technology that helps us to install different Operating Systems on a
hardware. They are completely separated and independent from each other. In
Wikipedia, you can find the definition as – “In computing, virtualization is a broad term
that refers to the abstraction of computer resources.Virtualization hides the physical
characteristics of computing resources from their users, their applications or end users.
This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system,
an application or a storage device) appear to function as multiple virtual resources. It
can also include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or
servers) appear as a single virtual resource...”
 Virtualization is often:
 The creation of many virtual resources from one physical resource.
 The creation of one virtual resource from one or more physical resource

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Understanding virtualization ‐Types of Virtualization

 Today the term virtualization is widely applied to a number of concepts, some of which
are described below:
 Server Virtualization
 Client & Desktop Virtualization
 Services and Applications Virtualization
 Network Virtualization
 Storage Virtualization

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1. Server Virtualization
 virtualize the server that we use, that is we will be running multiple VM’s
(virtual machines) in a single physical server.
 Here the resource form this physical server will be shared among all the virtual
servers that are being used.
 Some of the resources which are being shared majorly are CPU, Storage, ROM,
and RAM, etc and we will be sharing them on the hypervisor (a layer of
software between the base hardware and the virtual machines).
 These virtual machines are isolated and independent of each other and they
are completely capable of running the different OS in different machines.
 Some of the competitive vendors that are available in the market who do this
server virtualisation are vsphere (VMware), Xenserver (Citrix) and Hyper-V
(Microsoft), etc.

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1. Server Virtualization
 Some of the competitive vendors that are available in the market who do this server
virtualisation are vSphere (VMware), Xenserver (Citrix) and Hyper-V (Microsoft), etc.

 It is virtualizing your server infrastructure where you do not have to use any more physical
servers for different purposes.

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2. Client & Desktop Virtualization

 This type of virtualisation also known as VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) was
in our operating system will be running like a virtual machine on a server along
with other VD (virtual desktops).
 For the processing of these VD’s, we will be doing it in a data center with the
help of physical servers.
 The multiple applications and operating systems that are being used by the
end-user will be cached in the memory on the server.
 This is similar to server virtualisation, but this time is on the user’s site where
you virtualize their desktops. We change their desktops with thin clients and by
utilizing the datacentre resources.
 The major virtualisation vendors are Citrix and VMware Horizon

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2. Client & Desktop Virtualization

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3. Services and Applications Virtualization

 In this type of virtualisation we use software to make our application as a single executable
file that can be run anywhere, this software will be segregated from our OS and we will run it
in a sandbox. Application virtualisation can further be divided into two categories they are:
 Remote: In this type of application virtualisation, the client will be using a display protocol that is
remote for the purpose of communicating to the client machine. One of the advantages of this type of
virtualisation is that, because it is being used widely it is easy for setting up displays for various
applications.
 Streaming: The beauty of this kind of application virtualisation is that we will be able to have a copy
of the app on our server and we can have them run parallel in the local systems of client, so because
of this upgrading, the application becomes much easier as the client will always point to the latest
version.

 A few examples of application virtualisation are Xenapp, VM Thinapp, and Zenworks, etc.
 The virtualisation technology isolates applications from the underlying operating system and
from other applications, in order to increase compatibility and manageability.
 For example – Docker can be used for that purpose.

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3. Services and Applications Virtualization

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4. Network Virtualization
 Here we will be using software to decouple the virtual network form the
baseline and it will perform the functionality of a network. The following
illustration shows the VMware schema:

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4. Network Virtualization
 After we have started using this network virtualisation then we will be using the
physical network for the sole purpose to forward the packets and we will be doing
the management work using the software.
 We basically collect the entire network and with the help of the routing table we will
manage it in real-time and they are also independent of each other
 .One example of network virtualisation is that VPN i.e. virtual private network with
the help of this anybody can create a network for them virtually in the internet.
 If we are providing network virtualisation (NV) to one system, we will call it internal
and if we are combining them in a virtual network we call it as external NV.
 It is a part of virtualisation infrastructure, which is used especially if you are going to
visualize your servers.

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5. Storage Virtualization
 Storage virtualisation basically combines/pools the storage that is available in various
devices and keeps it as single storage. Identification of the available storage is done by
leveraging the software and aggregates them to use it in a virtual system/environment.
 The software actually constantly monitors the various I/O requests from any virtual/physical
system and it intercepts them and sends it to the appropriate location where the combined
storages are maintained in a virtual environment.
 This technique of storage virtualisation actually helps the administrator for any recovery or
backup or archival of data in an effective and efficient manner by taking comparatively less
time than the usual.
 Some of the advantages of this kind of virtualisation are:
 Our data does not get compromised easily even if the host fails as we store our data in a different and
convenient place.
 It is easy for us to protect, provide and use our data as we implement some level of abstraction in our
storage
 Additional functions such as recovery, duplication, replication, etc. can be done with ease

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5. Storage Virtualization
 This is widely used in datacentres’ where you have a big storage and it helps
you to create, delete, allocated storage to different hardware. This allocation is
done through network connection. The leader on storage is SAN.
 A schematic illustration is given below:

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Need, and Applications of virtualisation

 Virtualisation helps in transferring data easily, protects from system failures,
reduces the cost
 Virtualisation also helps in increasing the efficiency of the development and
operations
 Virtualisation can increase IT agility, flexibility and scalability
 virtualisation that make IT simpler to manage and less costly to own and operate
 Virtualisation is the most needed in cloud computing
 Here are four situations where a business could virtualize systems:
 Virtualize if you rely on technology
 Virtualize if your company exceeds 20 employees
 Virtualize if you can cover the costs
 Virtualize if you want space

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Situations where a business could virtualize systems…

 Virtualize if you rely on technology – Companies that rely on technology often use several
servers and technology from hardware like laptops and networks. Basically, if your company
needs technology to operate, virtualisation can help you reduce the overall operation costs.
 Virtualize if your company exceeds 20 employees – Many tech experts agree that there is
no need for virtualisation if you have a business with less than 10-20 employees. With that
number, traditional servers are usually more than enough to cater to your needs.
 Virtualize if you can cover the costs – While virtualisation is meant to reduce costs, like any
modern technology it requires an initial investment. The cost of virtualisation can be high for
smaller businesses to implement, however you do have an option of working with an IT
partner like us. We can help you realize cost-savings or even a Return On Investment (ROI).
For companies with servers in place, virtualisation can be as simple as installing a free
program.
 Virtualize if you want space – Certain business operators throw away a big chunk of their
money on an extra room to house large server racks, wires or even IT personnel to maintain
them. The issue here is the cost of maintenance, as well as limited office space. In this
situation, virtualisation can help make better use of space while reducing hardware costs.

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Five major needs of virtualisation

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Five major needs of virtualisation

 1. ENHANCED PERFORMANCE-Currently, the end user system i.e. PC is sufficiently
powerful to fulfil all the basic computation requirements of the user, with various additional
capabilities which are rarely used by the user. Most of their systems have sufficient resources
which can host a virtual machine manager and can perform a virtual machine with acceptable
performance so far.
 2. LIMITED USE OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE RESOURCES-The limited use of the
resources leads to under-utilization of hardware and software resources. As all the PCs of the
user are sufficiently capable to fulfil their regular computational needs that’s why many of
their computers are used often which can be used 24/7 continuously without any interruption.
The efficiency of IT infrastructure could be increase by using these resources after hours for
other purposes. This environment is possible to attain with the help of Virtualisation.
 3. SHORTAGE OF SPACE-The regular requirement for additional capacity, whether memory
storage or compute power, leads data centers raise rapidly. Companies like Google, Microsoft
and Amazon develop their infrastructure by building data centers as per their needs. Mostly,
enterprises unable to pay to build any other data center to accommodate additional resource
capacity. This heads to the diffusion of a technique which is known as server consolidation.
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Five major needs of virtualisation

 4. ECO-FRIENDLY INITIATIVES-At this time, corporations are actively seeking for various
methods to minimize their expenditures on power which is consumed by their systems. Data
centers are main power consumers and maintaining a data center operation needs a
continuous power supply as well as a good amount of energy is needed to keep them cool for
well-functioning. Therefore, server consolidation drops the power consumed and cooling
impact by having a fall in number of servers. Virtualisation can provide a sophisticated
method of server consolidation.
 5. ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS-Furthermore, the rise in demand for capacity surplus, that
convert into more servers in a data center, accountable for a significant increase in
administrative costs. Hardware monitoring, server setup and updates, defective hardware
replacement, server resources monitoring, and backups are included in common system
administration tasks. These are personnel-intensive operations. The administrative costs is
increased as per the number of servers. Virtualisation decreases number of required servers
for a given workload, hence reduces the cost of administrative employees.

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Virtualisation Reference Model

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Virtualisation Reference Model

 1. GUEST: The guest represents the system component that interacts with the
virtualisation layer rather than with the host, as would normally happen. Guests
usually consist of one or more virtual disk files, and a VM definition file. Virtual
Machines are centrally managed by a host application that sees and manages each
virtual machine as a different application.
 2. HOST: The host represents the original environment where the guest is supposed
to be managed. Each guest runs on the host using shared resources donated to it by
the host. The operating system, works as the host and manages the physical
resource management, and the device support.
 3. VIRTUALISATION LAYER: The virtualisation layer is responsible for recreating
the same or a different environment where the guest will operate. It is an additional
abstraction layer between a network and storage hardware, computing, and the
application running on it. Usually it helps to run a single operating system per
machine which can be very inflexible compared to the usage of virtualisation.
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Applications of virtualisation – VM vs HV
 What is a virtual machine (VM)?
 In the simplest terms possible, a virtual machine (VM) is a virtual representation of a physical
computer. As mentioned above, Virtualisation allows an organization to create multiple virtual
machines—each with their own operating system (OS) and applications—on a single physical
machine.
 A virtual machine can’t interact directly with a physical computer, however. Instead, it needs a
lightweight software layer called a hypervisor to coordinate with the physical hardware upon
which it runs.
 What is a hypervisor?
 The hypervisor is essential to Virtualisation — it's a thin software layer that allows
multiple operating systems to run alongside each other and share the same
physical computing resources. These operating systems come as the aforementioned virtual
machines (VMs)—virtual representations of a physical computer—and the hypervisor assigns
each VM its own portion of the underlying computing power, memory, and storage. This
prevents the VMs from interfering with each other.
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Applications of virtualisation – VM vs HV
(1) Server Consolidation:

 Virtual machines are used to consolidate many physical servers into fewer servers.
 Each physical server is reflected as a virtual machine “guest”. They reside on a virtual machine host system.
 This is also known as “Physical-to-Virtual” or ‘P2V’ transformation.
(2) Disaster Recovery:

 Virtual machines can be used as “hot standby” environments for physical production servers.
 Virtual storage can be replicated and transferred to another location. Virtualisation is very useful in planning for
disaster recovery.

(3) Testing and Training:

 Virtualisation can give root access to a virtual machine.

 This can be very useful such as in kernel development and operating system courses.

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Applications of virtualisation – VM vs HV
(4) Portable Applications:

 Portable applications are needed when running an application from a removable drive, without installing it on the
system’s main disk drive.

 Virtualisation can be used to store temporary files, windows registry entries and other information in the
application’s installation directory and not within the system’s permanent file system.

(5) Portable Workspaces:

 Recent technologies have used Virtualisation to create portable workspaces on devices like iPods and USB
memory sticks.

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Advantages and Limitations of virtualisation

 Using Virtualisation for Efficient Hardware  Extra Costs
Utilization  Software Licensing
 Using Virtualisation to Increase Availability  Learn the new Infrastructure
 Disaster Recovery
 Save Energy
 Deploying Servers too fast
 Save Space in your Server Room or Datacenter
 Testing and setting up Lab Environment
 Shifting all your Local Infrastructure to Cloud in
a day
 Possibility to Divide Services
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Advantages
Using Virtualisation for Efficient Hardware Utilization
 Virtualisation decreases costs by reducing the need for physical hardware systems. Virtual
machines use efficient hardware, which lowers the quantities of hardware, associated
maintenance costs and reduces the power along with cooling the demand. You can allocate
memory, space and CPU in just a second, making you more self-independent from hardware
vendors.
Using Virtualisation to Increase Availability
 Virtualisation platforms offer a number of advanced features that are not found on physical
servers, which increase uptime and availability. They usually offer capabilities such as live
migration, storage migration, fault tolerance, high availability and distributed resource
scheduling.
 These technologies keep virtual machines chugging along or give them the ability to recover
from unplanned outages.
 The ability to move a virtual machine from one server to another is perhaps one of the
greatest single benefits of virtualisation with far reaching uses.

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Advantages
Disaster Recovery
 Disaster recovery is very easy when your servers are virtualized. With up-to-date
snapshots of your virtual machines, you can quickly get back up and running. An
organization can more easily create an affordable replication site. If a disaster
strikes in the data center or server room itself, you can always move those virtual
machines elsewhere into a cloud provider.
 Having that level of flexibility means your disaster recovery plan will be easier to
enact and will have a 99% success rate.
Save Energy
 Moving physical servers to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer
physical servers’ means lowering monthly power and cooling costs in the data
center. It reduces carbon footprint and helps to clean up the air we breathe.
Consumers want to see companies reducing their output of pollution and taking
responsibility.

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Advantages
Deploying Servers too fast
 You can quickly clone an image, master template or existing virtual machine to
get a server up and running within minutes.
 You do not have to fill out purchase orders, wait for shipping and receiving and
then rack, stack, and cable a physical machine only to spend additional hours
waiting for the operating system and applications to complete their
installations.
Save Space in your Server Room or Datacenter
 Imagine a simple example: you have two racks with 30 physical servers and 4
switches. By virtualizing your servers, it will help you to reduce half the space
used by the physical servers. The result can be two physical servers in a rack
with one switch, where each physical server holds 15 virtualized servers.

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Advantages
Testing and setting up Lab Environment
 While you are testing or installing something on your servers and it crashes, do not
panic, as there is no data loss. Just revert to a previous snapshot and you can move
forward as if the mistake did not even happen. You can also isolate these testing
environments from end users while still keeping them online. When you have
completely done your work, deploy it in live.
Shifting all your Local Infrastructure to Cloud in a day
 If you decide to shift your entire virtualized infrastructure into a cloud provider, you
can do it in a day. All the hypervisors offer you tools to export your virtual servers.
Possibility to Divide Services
 If you have a single server, holding different applications this can increase the
possibility of the services to crash with each other and increasing the fail rate of the
server. If you virtualize this server, you can put applications in separated
environments from each other as we have discussed previously.
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A few more Benefits of Virtualisation

 Virtualisation can increase
 IT agility,
 flexibility and scalability while
 creating significant cost savings.
 Greater workload mobility,
 increased performance and availability of resources,
 automated operations
 – they’re all benefits of virtualisation that make IT simpler to manage and less
costly to own and operate.

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A few more Benefits of Virtualisation

 It is cheaper.
 It keeps costs predictable.
 It reduces the workload.
 It offers a better uptime.
 It allows for faster deployment of resources.
 It promotes digital entrepreneurship
 It provides energy savings.

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1. It is cheaper.
 1. It is cheaper.
Because virtualisation doesn’t require actual hardware components to be used
or installed, IT infrastructures find it to be a cheaper system to implement.
There is no longer a need to dedicate large areas of space and huge monetary
investments to create an on-site resource. You just purchase the license or the
access from a third-party provider and begin to work, just as if the hardware
were installed locally.

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2. It keeps costs predictable.

 2. It keeps costs predictable.
Because third-party providers typically provide virtualisation options,
individuals and corporations can have predictable costs for their information
technology needs. For example: the cost of a Dell PowerEdge T330 Tower
Server, at the time of writing, is $1,279 direct from the manufacturer. In
comparison, services provided by Bluehost Web Hosting can be a slow as $2.95
per month.

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3. It reduces the workload.

 3. It reduces the workload.
Most virtualisation providers automatically update their hardware and software
that will be utilized. Instead of sending people to do these updates locally, they
are installed by the third-party provider. This allows local IT professionals to
focus on other tasks and saves even more money for individuals or
corporations.

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4. It offers a better uptime.

 4. It offers a better uptime.
Thanks to virtualisation technologies, uptime has improved dramatically. Some
providers offer an uptime that is 99.9999%. Even budget-friendly providers
offer uptime at 99.99% today.

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5. It allows for faster deployment of resources.

 5. It allows for faster deployment of resources.
Resource provisioning is fast and simple when virtualisation is being used.
There is no longer a need to set up physical machines, create local networks, or
install other information technology components. As long as there is at least
one point of access to the virtual environment, it can be spread to the rest of the
organization.

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6. It promotes digital entrepreneurship

 6. It promotes digital entrepreneurship.
Before virtualisation occurred on a large scale, digital entrepreneurship was
virtually impossible for the average person. Thanks to the various platforms,
servers, and storage devices that are available today, almost anyone can start
their own side hustle or become a business owner. Sites like Fiverr and UpWork
make it possible for anyone to set a shingle and begin finding some work to do.

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7. It provides energy savings.

 7. It provides energy savings.
For most individuals and corporations, virtualisation is an energy-efficient
system. Because there aren’t local hardware or software options being utilized,
energy consumption rates can be lowered. Instead of paying for the cooling
costs of a data center and the operational costs of equipment, funds can be used
for other operational expenditures over time to improve virtualisation ’s overall
ROI.

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Additional benefits
 Additional benefits include:
1. Reduced capital and operating costs.
2. Minimized or eliminated downtime.
3. Increased IT productivity, efficiency, agility and responsiveness.
4. Faster provisioning of applications and resources.
5. Greater business continuity and disaster recovery.
6. Simplified data center management.
7. Availability of a true Software-Defined Data Center.

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Limitations of Virtualisation
 Although you cannot find many Limitations for virtualisation, we will discuss a
few prominent ones
1. Extra Costs
2. Software Licensing
3. Learn the new Infrastructure

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Limitation 1
 Extra Costs
 Maybe you have to invest in the virtualisation software and possibly additional
hardware might be required to make the virtualisation possible. This depends
on your existing network. Many businesses have sufficient capacity to
accommodate the virtualisation without requiring much cash. If you have an
infrastructure that is more than five years old, you have to consider an initial
renewal budget.

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Limitation 2
 Software Licensing
 This is becoming less of a problem as more software vendors adapt to the
increased adoption of virtualisation. However, it is important to check with your
vendors to understand how they view software use in a virtualized environment.

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Limitation 3
 Learn the new Infrastructure
 Implementing and managing a virtualized environment will require IT staff with
expertise in virtualisation. On the user side, a typical virtual environment will
operate similarly to the non-virtual environment. There are some applications
that do not adapt well to the virtualized environment.

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A few more Limitations of Virtualisation

 It can have a high cost of implementation. ...
 It still has limitations. ...
 It creates a security risk. ...
 It creates an availability issue. ...
 It creates a scalability issue. ...
 It requires several links in a chain that must work together cohesively. ...
 It takes time.

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More Limitation 1
 1. It can have a high cost of implementation.
 The cost for the average individual or business when virtualisation is being
considered will be quite low. For the providers of a virtualisation environment,
however, the implementation costs can be quite high. Hardware and software
are required at some point and that means devices must either be developed,
manufactured, or purchased for implementation.

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More Limitation 2
 2. It still has limitations.
 Not every application or server is going to work within an environment of
virtualisation. That means an individual or corporation may require a hybrid
system to function properly. This still saves time and money in the long run, but
since not every vendor supports virtualisation and some may stop supporting it
after initially starting it, there is always a level of uncertainty when fully
implementing this type of system.

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More Limitation 3
 3. It creates a security risk.
 Information is our modern currency. If you have it, you can make money. If you
don’t have it, you’ll be ignored. Because data is crucial to the success of a
business, it is targeted frequently. The average cost of a data security breach in
2017, according to a report published by the Ponemon Institute, was $3.62
million. For perspective: the chances of being struck by lightning are about 1 in
a million. The chances of experiencing a data breach while using virtualisation?
1 in 4.

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More Limitation 4
 4. It creates an availability issue.
 The primary concern that many have with virtualisation is what will happen to
their work should their assets not be available. If an organization cannot
connect to their data for an extended period of time, they will struggle to
compete in their industry. And, since availability is controlled by third-party
providers, the ability to stay connected in not in one’s control with
virtualisation.

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More Limitation 5
 5. It creates a scalability issue.
 Although you can grow a business or opportunity quickly because of
virtualisation, you may not be able to become as large as you’d like. You may
also be required to be larger than you want to be when first starting out.
 Because many entities share the same resources, growth creates lag within a
virtualisation network. One large presence can take resources away from
several smaller businesses and there would be nothing anyone could do about
it.

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More Limitation 6
 6. It requires several links in a chain that must work together cohesively.
 If you have local equipment, then you are in full control of what you can do. With
virtualisation, you lose that control because several links must work together to
perform the same task.
 Let’s using the example of saving a document file. With a local storage device,
like a flash drive or HDD, you can save the file immediately and even create a
backup. Using virtualisation, your ISP connection would need to be valid. Your
LAN or Wi-Fi would need to be working. Your online storage option would need
to be available. If any of those are not working, then you’re not saving that file.

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More Limitation 7
 7. It takes time.
 Although you save time during the implementation phases of virtualisation, it
costs users time over the long-run when compared to local systems. That is
because there are extra steps that must be followed to generate the desired
result.

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Simulations and Emulations

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Simulations and Emulations

 Often the terms simulation and emulation are used interchangeably.
 But, there is a distinct difference between emulators vs. simulators.
 Both mimic the real thing in a virtual environment.
 However, the differences between emulation vs. simulation are quite big when it
comes to mobile automation.

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What Are Simulators?

 “A simulator mimics the basic behaviour of a device. ”

 Simulators mean you're copying things from the real world into a virtual
environment to give an idea about how that thing would work.
 It simulates the basic behaviour but doesn’t necessarily follow all the rules of
the real environment. A simulator in mobile testing is also a virtual device. It
allows you to test your app by simulating behaviour of a real device.

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What Are Emulators?

 An emulator duplicates the thing exactly as it exists in real life.
 Emulation means basically a complete imitation of the real thing. It just operates
in a virtual environment instead of the real world. An emulator in mobile testing
is a virtual device. It allows you to test your app by emulating a real device. A
device emulator mimics the hardware or OS of the device.

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Both – E & S
 A simulator creates an environment that mimics the behaviour and
configurations of a real device. On the other hand, an emulator
duplicates all the hardware and software features of a real device.
When it comes to emulation vs. simulation, both are useful in
mobile app testing in addition to real devices.

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Emulation vs. Simulation

 Emulation :
 Emulation, as name suggests, is a technique that enables host system to run
software or use peripheral devices especially designed for guest system. Its
main purpose is to replace hardware or software components with function
equivalents when original modules are not available. It mimics hardware and
software of target device on computer.
 Example : Android SDK, etc.

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Emulation vs. Simulation

 Simulation :
 Simulation, as name suggests, is a technique that helps computer to run certain
programs developed for different OS. It usually provides essential method of
analysis that is easily communication, verified and understood. Its main
purpose is to shed light on mechanism that usually control behaviour of
system. It is totally computer based and uses algorithms and equations.
 Example : iOS Simulator, flight simulator, etc.

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Differences Between Emulation vs. Simulation

Criteria Simulation Emulation
Provided by Device manufacturers and Device manufacturers.
other companies.
Target area Internal behaviour of the Mobile device hardware, software,
mobile device. and operating system.
Internal Written in high-level language. Written in machine-level assembly
structure language.

Used/suitable Unit testing, automation Unit testing, automation testing,

for testing. debugging.

Performance Faster compared to emulators. Slower due to latency since it

involves binary translation.
Reliability Low, as it cannot simulate all Same for emulation, as it cannot
types of user interactions. simulate all types of user
interactions.

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No Emulation Simulation

5/10/2021
1 It is a process of enabling one computer system It is a process of simulating abstract model of
73 particular
to have like another computer system. computer system.

2 It generally allows to model older hardware and It generally allows experimentation on valid digital
software and then re-create them using current representation of system.
or new technology.

3 Its main aim is to replicate experience of using Its main aim is to establish virtual and safe environment in
original hardware and software. which each of these attributes can be tested and refined
over full range of production levels.

4 It is simply used to imitate behaviour of another It is simply used to predict and forecast future behaviour
program or device, running OS in hardware of system, study dynamic behaviour of objects or
platform, etc. systems, simulation of technology for testing, training, etc.

5 Its advantages include better graphic quality, Its advantages include increase safety and efficiency, avoid

The save space, emulation in video games, add danger and loss of life, slowed down to study behaviour
post-processing effects, etc. more closely, etc.

comparison 6 It replaces underlying component with different It is finalized typically to anticipate result of reality without

between one that-in respect to user works as old one. touching reality itself.

Emulation and 7 Internal structure is usually written in Machine- Internal structure is usually written in high-level language.
Level assembly language.
Simulation 8 It includes binary translation due to which it It does not include binary translation due to which it is
becomes much slower due to latency. much faster as compared to emulation.

9 It can be difficult for debugging purpose. It is more suitable for debugging.

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How They’re Different

 But the fact that simulators and emulators both serve similar purposes does not
mean that they work in identical ways. There are essential differences between
them.
 A simulator is designed to create an environment that contains all of the software
variables and configurations that will exist in an application’s actual production
environment. Because simulators create only software environments, they can be
implemented using high-level programming languages.
 In contrast, an emulator does attempt to mimic all of the hardware features of a
production environment, as well as software features. To achieve this, you typically
need to write an emulator using assembly language.
 In a sense, then, you can think of emulators as occupying a middle ground between
simulators and real devices. Whereas simulators only mimic environment features
that can be configured or defined using software, emulators mimic both hardware
and software features.

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How They’re Different

 In a sense, then, you can think of emulators as occupying a middle ground
between simulators and real devices. Whereas simulators only mimic
environment features that can be configured or defined using software,
emulators mimic both hardware and software features.

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How They’re Different

 Simulation
 A simulation is a system that behaves similar to something else, but is
implemented in an entirely different way. It provides the basic behaviour
of a system, but may not necessarily adhere to all of the rules of the
system being simulated. It is there to give you an idea about how
something works.
Example
Think of a flight simulator as an example. It looks and feels like you are flying an airplane, but you are
completely disconnected from the reality of flying the plane, and you can bend or break those rules as
you see fit. For example, fly an Airbus A380 upside down between London and Sydney without
breaking it.

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How They’re Different

 Emulation
 An emulation is a system that behaves exactly like something else, and
adheres to all of the rules of the system being emulated. It is effectively a
complete replication of another system, right down to being binary
compatible with the emulated system's inputs and outputs, but operating
in a different environment to the environment of the original emulated
system. The rules are fixed, and cannot be changed, or the system fails.
Example
The M.A.M.E.( Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) system is built around this very premise. All those old
arcade systems that have been long forgotten, that were implemented almost entirely in hardware, or in
the firmware of their hardware systems can be emulated right down to the original bugs and crashes
that would occur when you reached the highest possible score.

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When to Use Simulators

 Typically, simulators are best for software testing scenarios in which you’re
focused on making sure that an application performs as expected when
interacting with external applications or environments.
 For example,
 you may want to test an app’s ability to send data to another application. A
simulated environment will typically suffice for this, because the underlying
hardware configuration is unlikely to have much of an impact on data
transactions for your application. Similarly, if you want to make sure that an
application’s interface displays properly under different screen resolutions,
simulated testing environments are appropriate.

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When to Use Emulators

 On the other hand, emulators are most useful when you need to test how
software interacts with underlying hardware, or a combination of hardware and
software.
 Do you want to know whether a firmware update will cause problems for your
application? An emulator can help you find that out. Or perhaps you need to
know how your application performs using different types of CPUs or different
memory allocations. These are also scenarios where emulators come in handy.

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Nutshell

Simulation is trying to replicate the performance.

Emulation is trying to represents the functionality.
Similarity:
both are virtualisation technique.
Difference:
simulation is about performance measurements; emulation is about
functionality.

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Challenges in Virtualized
environment

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

The bottom line is that a virtualized environment is more complex and requires a
new management approach. These are the common problems talked about
behind closed doors.
 1. Resource distribution
 The way virtualisation partitions systems can result in varied ways — some
might function really well, and others might not provide users access to
enough resources to meet their needs.
 Resource distribution problems often occur in the shift to virtualisation and
can be fixed by working on capacity planning with your service provider.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

 2. VM Sprawl
 VM sprawl, the unchecked growth of virtual machines in a virtual
environment, as any virtualisation admin knows, can cripple an otherwise
healthy environment. It is problematic because its underlying cause often
stays hidden until it manifests in resource shortages.
 You should look at how virtual machines will be managed, who will be doing
what, and what systems you’re going to use. One of the optimal times to
develop an overall management plan is when you’re in a testing phase,
before migration.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

 3. Backward compatibility
 Using legacy systems can cause problems with newer virtualized software
programs.
 Compatibility issues can be time-consuming and difficult to solve.
 A good provider may be able to suggest upgrades and workarounds to ensure
that everything functions the way they should.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

 4. Performance monitoring
 Virtualized systems don’t lend themselves to the same kind of performance
monitoring as hardware like mainframes and hardware drives do.
 Try tools like VMmark to create benchmarks that measure performance on
virtual networks and to monitor resource usage as well.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

 5. Backup
In a virtualized environment, there is no actual hard drive on which data and
systems can be backed up.
 This means frequent software updates can make it difficult to access backup at
times.
 Software programs like Windows Server Backup tools can make this process
easier and allow backups to be stored in one place for easier tracking and
access.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment

 6. Security
Virtual systems could be vulnerable when users don’t keep them secure and
apply best practices for passwords or downloads.
 Security then becomes a problem for virtualisation, but the isolation of each
VM by the system can mitigate security risks and prevent systems from
getting breached or compromised.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Performance Monitoring:
 Unlike physical servers, monitoring the performance of the virtual servers
requires a different approach. Conventional CPU and memory utilization
monitoring don’t work.
 In a virtual infrastructure, the VMs share the common hardware resources such
as CPU, memory, and storage. If a host has hundreds of VMs, each of the VMs
shares a certain percentage of these resources, the data processing works in
tandem.
 To ensure the performance of a virtual infrastructure, a different set of
performance metrics has to be monitored. Metrics such as CPU ready,
memory ready, memory balloon, and swapped memory have to be
monitored across all the VMs in real-time. In addition, live migration of VMs
increases the monitoring complexity.
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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Security
 Attacks on Virtualization Infrastructure (Hyper-Jacking and Guest-Hopping/ Hyper-
Jumping): In virtualized systems, the hypervisor is the single point of failure in security and if
you lose it, you lose the protection of sensitive information. This increases the degree of risk
and exposure substantially.
 For example, hyper-jacking involves installing a rogue hypervisor that can take complete
control of a server. Regular security measures are ineffective because the operating system
will not even be aware that the machine has been compromised. Pro-active (rather than
reactive) measures such as hardening the environment are required. So the best way to avoid
Hyper-Jacking is to use hardware-rooted trust and secure launching of the hypervisor.
 VM jumping or guest-hopping is a more realistic possibility and poses just as serious a threat.
This attack method typically exploits vulnerabilities in hypervisors that allow malware
or remote attacks to compromise VM separation protections and gain access to other
VMs, hosts or even the hypervisor itself. These attacks are often accomplished once an
attacker has gained access to a low-value, thus less secure, VM on the host, which is then used
as a launch point for further attacks on the system. Some examples have used two or more
compromised VMs in collusion to enable a successful attack against secured VMs or the
hypervisor itself.
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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Managing VM Sprawl:
 Since virtualization brought in the power of easily allocating the storage space to
VMs, it led to both the uncontrolled growth of virtual machines as well as the
overallocation of resources.
 In a typical virtual infrastructure, all of the available VMs are not used to full
capacity, which wastes available resources. Hence, VM sprawl has become the
Achilles’ heel to virtualization.
 To avoid VM sprawl, the virtual infrastructure has to be monitored continuously to
identify VMs that are idle for a certain period, VMs that have resources
overprovisioned or under-provisioned, and VMs that are not even powered on since
they were provisioned.
 By removing such unused VMs – or optimizing the resources allocated to VMs –
virtual sprawl can be greatly minimized. Resource optimization also avoids needless
hardware purchases.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Attacks on Virtualization Features:
 Although there are multiple features of virtualization that can be targeted for
exploitation, the more common targets include VM migration and virtual
networking functions.
 VM migration, if done insecurely, can expose all aspects of a given VM to both
passive sniffing and active manipulation attacks.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Compliance and Management Challenges:
 Compliance auditing and enforcement, as well as day-to-day system
management, are challenging issues when dealing with virtualized systems.
 VM sprawl and even dormant VMs will make it a challenge to get accurate
results from vulnerability assessments, patching/updates, and auditing.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Capacity Planning:
 Virtual infrastructure acts as the backbone of data centers that power today’s
businesses. As a business grows, it is necessary to expand its underlying
infrastructure also.
 Without proper capacity planning, the server management team will have a
hard time scaling the infrastructure to meet business demands.
 Capacity planning also requires constant monitoring of the virtual
infrastructure. A trend on the resource consumption by the VMs has to be
identified and should be projected over a period of time.
 This helps the server administrator to understand the current trend and plan
how many resources have to be added to handle the future load.

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Challenges in Virtualized environment explained

Licensing Issues:
 Software vendors license virtualization in different ways. Unfortunately, there is
no industry standard for applying metrics to virtual scenarios. Some software
companies try to ignore the issue and remain in the physical realm, while others
create conversion models based on peak resource use or running instances.
 For example, one organization was running seven virtual instances on a server
with four physical cores. Depending on which software they were using, they
required seven licenses from one vendor – but only four from another.

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