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Virtualisation
Virtualisation will transform your business
Virtualisation is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute.
It will dramatically improve the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in your organisation. Internal resources are underutilised under the old “one server, one application” model and IT admins spend too much time managing servers rather than innovating, whereas an automated datacentre built on a virtualisation platform lets you respond faster and more efficiently than ever before.
- Virtualisation customers typically save 50-70% on overall IT costs by consolidating their resource pools and delivering highly available machines.
- Run multiple operating systems on a single computer including Windows, Linux and more.
- Let your Mac run Windows creating a virtual PC environment for all your Windows applications.
- Reduce capital costs by increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware and increasing your server to admin ratio
- Ensure your enterprise applications perform with the highest availability and performance
- Build up business continuity through improved disaster recovery solutions and deliver high availability throughout the datacentre
- Improve enterprise desktop management & control with faster deployment of desktops and fewer support calls due to application conflicts
What is Virtualisation?
Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. However, this leaves most machines vastly underutilised.
Virtualisation lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, sharing the resources of that single computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer.
Transform or “virtualise” the hardware resources of an x86-based computer—including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller—to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer.
Each virtual machine contains a complete system, eliminating potential conflicts a thin layer of software is inserted directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machine monitor or “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other.
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By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, and network devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it needs them. |
What is a virtual machine
A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operating systems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like a physical computer and contains it own virtual (ie, software-based) CPU, RAM hard disk and network interface card (NIC).
An operating system can’t tell the difference between a virtual machine and a physical machine, nor can applications or other computers on a network. Even the virtual machine thinks it is a “real” computer. Nevertheless, a virtual machine is composed entirely of software and contains no hardware components whatsoever. As a result, virtual machines offer a number of distinct advantages over physical hardware.
Compatibility
Just like a physical computer, a virtual machine hosts its own guest operating system and applications, and has all the components found in a physical computer (motherboard, VGA card, network card controller, etc). As a result, virtual machines are completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications and device drivers, so you can use a virtual machine to run all the same software that you would run on a physical x86 computer.
Isolation
While virtual machines can share the physical resources of a single computer, they remain completely isolated from each other as if they were separate physical machines. If, for example, there are four virtual machines on a single physical server and one of the virtual machines crashes, the other three virtual machines remain available. Isolation is an important reason why the availability and security of applications running in a virtual environment is far superior to applications running in a traditional, non-virtualised system.
Encapsulation
A virtual machine is essentially a software container that bundles or “encapsulates” a complete set of virtual hardware resources, as well as an operating system and all its applications, inside a software package. Encapsulation makes virtual machines incredibly portable and easy to manage. For example, you can move and copy a virtual machine from one location to another just like any other software file, or save a virtual machine on any standard data storage medium, from a pocket-sized USB flash memory card to an enterprise storage area networks (SANs).
Hardware Independence
Virtual machines are completely independent from their underlying physical hardware. For example, you can configure a virtual machine with virtual components (eg, CPU, network card, SCSI controller) that are completely different from the physical components that are present on the underlying hardware. Virtual machines on the same physical server can even run different kinds of operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc).
When coupled with the properties of encapsulation and compatibility, hardware independence gives you the freedom to move a virtual machine from one type of x86 computer to another without making any changes to the device drivers, operating system, or applications. Hardware independence also means that you can run a heterogeneous mixture of operating systems and applications on a single physical computer.
Use Virtual Machines as the Building Blocks of your Virtual Infrastructure
Virtual machines are a fundamental building block of a much larger solution: the virtual infrastructure. While a virtual machine represents the hardware resources of an entire computer, a virtual infrastructure represents the interconnected hardware resources of an entire IT infrastructure—including computers, network devices and shared storage resources. Organizations of all sizes use VMware solutions to build virtual server and desktop infrastructures that improve the availability, security and manageability of mission-critical applications.
What is Virtual Infrastructure
We coined a term for virtualising the IT infrastructure–we call it the Virtual Infrastructure. A Virtual Infrastructure lets you share your physical resources of multiple machines across your entire infrastructure.
A virtual machine lets you share the resources of a single physical computer across multiple virtual machines for maximum efficiency where resources are shared across multiple virtual machines and applications. Your business needs are the driving force behind dynamically mapping the physical resources of your infrastructure to applications—even as those needs evolve and change. Aggregate your x86 servers along with network and storage into a unified pool of IT resources that can be utilised by the applications when and where they’re needed.
This resource optimisation drives greater flexibility in the organisation and results in lower capital and operational costs.
What does Virtual Infrastructure consist of?
- Bare-metal hypervisors to enable full virtualisation of each x86 computer
- Virtual infrastructure services such as resource management and consolidated backup to optimise available resources among virtual machines
- Automation solutions that provide special capabilities to optimise a particular IT process such as provisioning or disaster recovery
Decouple your software environment from its underlying hardware infrastructure so you can aggregate multiple servers, storage infrastructure and networks into shared pools of resources. Then dynamically deliver those resources, securely and reliably, to applications as needed. This pioneering approach lets our customers use building blocks of inexpensive industry-standard servers to build a self-optimising datacentre and deliver high levels of utilisation, availability, automation and flexibility.
What are the advantages of a Virtual Infrastructure?
Gain the benefits of virtualisation in production-scale IT environments by building your virtual infrastructure with the leading virtualisation platform from VMware. VMware Infrastructure 3 unifies discrete hardware resources to create a shared dynamic platform, while delivering built–in availability, security and scalability to applications. It supports a wide range of operating system and application environments, as well as networking and storage infrastructure. We have designed our solutions to function independently of the hardware and operating system so you have a broad platform choice. Our solutions provide a key integration point for hardware and infrastructure management vendors and partners to deliver differentiated value that can be applied uniformly across all application and operating system environments.
Reduce costs with a Virtual Infrastructure
Lower your capital and operational costs and improve operational efficiency and flexibility. Go beyond server consolidation and deploy a standard virtualisation platform to automate your entire IT infrastructure. VMware customers have harnessed the power of virtualisation to better manage IT capacity, provide better service levels, and streamline IT processes.
Get more from your existing hardware
Our customers report dramatic results when they adopt our virtual infrastructure solutions, including:
- 60-80% utilisation rates for x86 servers (up from 5-15% in non-virtualised PCs)
- Cost savings of more than $3,000 annually for every workload virtualised
- Ability to provision new applications in minutes instead of days or weeks
- 85% improvement in recovery time from unplanned downtime
History of virtualisation
Virtualisation was first developed in the 1960s to partition large, mainframe hardware for better hardware utilisation. Today, computers based on x86 architecture are faced with the same problems of rigidity and underutilisation that mainframes faced in the 1960s.
VMware invented virtualisation for the x86 platform in the 1990s to address this underutilisation and other issues, overcoming many challenges in the process.
Today, VMware is the global leader in x86 virtualisation, with over 150,000 customers, including 100% of the Fortune 100.
In the beginning: Mainframe Virtualisation
Virtualisation was first implemented more than 30 years ago by IBM as a way to logically partition mainframe computers into separate virtual machines. These partitions allowed mainframes to “multitask”; run multiple applications and processes at the same time. Since mainframes were expensive resources at the time, they were designed for partitioning as a way to fully leverage the investment.
The need for x86 Virtualisation
Virtualisation was effectively abandoned during the 1980s and 1990s when client-server applications and inexpensive x86 servers and desktops led to distributed computing. The broad adoption of Windows and the emergence of Linux as server operating systems in the 1990s established x86 servers as the industry standard. The growth in x86 server and desktop deployments led to new IT infrastructure and operational challenges.
- Low infrastructure utilisation
Typical x86 server deployments achieve an average utilisation of only 10% to 15% of total capacity, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research firm. Organisations typically run one application per server to avoid the risk of vulnerabilities in one application affecting the availability of another application on the same server. - Increasing physical infrastructure costs
The operational costs to support growing physical infrastructure have steadily increased. Most computing infrastructure must remain operational at all times, resulting in power consumption, cooling and facilities costs that do not vary with utilisation levels. - Increasing IT Management costs
As computing environments become more complex, the level of specialised education and experience required for infrastructure management personnel and the associated costs of such personnel have increased. Organisations spend disproportionate time and resources on manual tasks associated with server maintenance, and thus require more personnel to complete these tasks. - Insufficient failover and disaster protection
Organisations are increasingly affected by the downtime of critical server applications and inaccessibility of critical end user desktops. The threat of security attacks, natural disasters, health pandemics and terrorism has elevated the importance of business continuity planning for both desktops and servers. - High maintenance end-user desktops
Managing and securing enterprise desktops present numerous challenges. Controlling a distributed desktop environment and enforcing management, access and security policies without impairing users’ ability to work effectively is complex and expensive. Numerous patches and upgrades must be continually applied to desktop environments to eliminate security vulnerabilities.
The VMware solution: full Virtualisation of x86 hardware
In 1999, VMware introduced virtualisation to x86 systems to address many of these challenges and transform x86 systems into a general purpose, shared hardware infrastructure that offers full isolation, mobility and operating system choice for application environments.
Challenges & obstacles to x86 Virtualisation
Unlike mainframes, x86 machines were not designed to support full virtualisation, and VMware had to overcome formidable challenges to create virtual machines out of x86 computers.
The basic function of most CPUs, both in mainframes and in PCs, is to execute a ie, a sequence of stored instructions (software program). In x86 processors, there are 17 specific instructions that create problems when virtualised, causing the operating system to display a warning, terminate the application, or simply crash altogether. As a result, these 17 instructions were a significant obstacle to the initial implementation of virtualisation on x86 computers.
The solution
To handle the problematic instructions in the x86 architecture, VMware developed an adaptive virtualisation technique that “traps” these instructions as they are generated and converts them into safe instructions that can be virtualised, while allowing all other instructions to be executed without intervention. The result is a high-performance virtual machine that matches the host hardware and maintains total software compatibility.
VMware pioneered this technique and is today the undisputed leader in virtualisation technology.
Why Virtualise?
Virtualising your IT infrastructure lets you reduce IT costs while increasing the efficiency, utilisation, and flexibility of your existing assets.
Around the world, companies of every size benefit from virtualisation. Thousands of organisations—including all of the Fortune 100—use virtualisation solutions.
Here’s why:
- Get more out of your existing resources
by ‘pooling’ common infrastructure resources and break the legacy “one application to one server” model with server consolidation. - Reduce datacentre costs
by reducing your physical infrastructure and improving your server to admin ratio. Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reduced real estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. Better management tools let you improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements are reduced as well. - Increase availability of hardware & applications
for improved business continuity. Securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately from unplanned issues.
Gain operational flexibility
Respond to market changes with dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning and improved desktop and application deployment.
Improve desktop manageability and security
Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.
- Reduce CapEx through consolidation
- Improve OpEx through automation
- Minimise lost revenue due to downtime
