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An Overview of Virtualization Technologies

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the an-operating-system-by-any-other-name dept.

PCM2 writes "Virtualization is all the rage these days. All the major Linux players are getting into the game with support for Xen, while Sun has Solaris Containers, Microsoft has Virtual PC, and VMware arguably leads the whole market with its high end tools. Even AMD and Intel are jumping onto the bandwagon. InfoWorld is running a special report on virtualization that gives an overview of all these options and more. Is it just a trend, or will server virtualization be the way to go in the near future?"

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Just a trend? NO WAY by giorgiofr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Virtualization is one of the best things since sliced bread and I believe it's here to stay. First of all, it spells an end to multi-booting. I have erased my secondary OSs and I run them in VMs under my main system. A performance hit does definitely occur by I am willing to pay such price for the greater ease of use. Secondly, just think of the possibility to move server images from a physical server to another one, literally freezing it here and awakening it over there - InstaScaleOut(tm) must be a server admin's wet dream.
    Of course, as with all abstraction layers, it introduces complexity and takes a toll in the form of performance - but we all know absraction layers have been increasing all the time since the beginning of time.

    --
    Global warming is a cube.
    1. Re:Just a trend? NO WAY by gkhan1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember reading in The Art of Computer Programming by Don Knuth in the chapter where he gives an interpreter for his fictional MIX computer (and, just to mess with us, it's written for the MIX computer!). I remember him saying that he didn't really want to do this because he didn't like simulators and interpreters, and he describes a situation where there were three or four layers of simulators running on top of each other, just because everyone had been to lazy redo the damn programming! When new hardware came in, instead of adapting the software they simply run it through a simulator of the old machine.

  2. One vote for VM Ware ESX Server by phase_9 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We run 2x VM Ware ESX Servers on Sun x4200 servers (w. 8 gig o' ram :) - the web-gui for ESX is second to none, incredibly easy to configure virtual machines. It's got us seriously considering moving more than just our dev enviroments over to virtualised hardware.

  3. a quote by haupz · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Virtual machines have finally arrived. Dismissed for a number of years as merely academic curiosities, they are now seen as cost-effective techniques for organizing computer systems resources to provide extraordinary system flexibility and support for certain unique applications."

    Now guess who said that, and when. :-)

    Robert P. Goldberg said that, in 1974.

    The fun thing about this is, it's still a very accurate statement. Other than in 1974, though, it doesn't solely apply to mainframes, but, as someone wrote in an earlier post, to everyday computers: desktop systems. I think that's great, and the above quote is more true than ever. Working on Mac OS X and having a Parallels session up and running where some Java application (for example) is tested in a Windows or what environment... lovely.

    Yes, I'm a virtualisation enthusiast, if you haven't guessed so already. ;-)

  4. wrong by m874t232 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Virtualization looks like necessary evil, because we are incompetent to write better OSes and Application. Virtualization is the easier route.

    It's not a question of "competence", there simply is no such thing as a uniformly "better" operating system or application. DOS, for example, is an excellent operating system for some narrow set of applications, and you can hack Mach or Singularity until the cows come home and you're not going to create something better.

    I would have preferred a better, from the ground-up OS any day. Hurd, or ever better Singularity!

    People like you are part of the reason why software sucks so badly: you simply don't understand real-world tradeoffs. People like you design systems like Mach or Windows, systems that try to be everything to everybody; people like you throw in MLOCs of useless features and generalizations and extensibility, and all you are doing is create bigger and bigger headaches.

    Virtualization is doing the right thing: it lets people focus on creating operating systems and server configurations that focus on solving specific problems. Maybe with virtualization, we can finally kill the general purpose operating system.