ToutVirtual Enterprise Virtualization - A Proper Virtual World

What is Virtualization? Can It Really Work For Us?

July 12th, 2007

Virtualization? What The Heck Is That? - Chapter 01

Virtualization is a simple concept to define, steal from Peter what he owns but does not use, and give to Paul. Or another way to look at it, virtualization is a form of computing communism! Take resources that are not used, and use them. Ok, so this is simplistic? Well, actually no. To explain my point, we need to go back to the early days of computer design and engineering, and the initial generation of software code development, which states: computing, regardless of the technology or the terminology, have two key resources, which are time and space. One key rule of computing is that you use time to save space, or you use space to save time, but you can not do both at once.  Now why did I explain this in reference to virtualization? Because in virtualization the assumption is, that you have additional time and/or space that you are not using effectively, that there is always some time, or some space in a computer system that is not used effectively all the time, at least some if not all the time.

Badda-Bing! Badda-Boom! Along comes a really cool idea, at least from a computer geek perspective, virtualization! Virtualization leverages this unused space and time and presents it to us humans in a useful way, which is often called a virtual instance or machine. Ok, you say, I get it! But how does it work?

Consider the following for example, a computer system that is only working 50% of the time doing any real work, and may only using 35% of its available memory and disk space. Sound familiar? It should: many computer systems are only busy a few seconds of every minute, as the size of memory and disk space has grown with the cost being reduced. Not to mention that you can not purchase smaller processors, disks or even memory sizes effectively because the industry always goes larger. Just about every computer system on planet earth is idle or never uses resources fully, a significant if not, the majority of the time, and often is oversized simply because you can not downsize, because older equipment which is smaller is obsolete or not supported. The entire industry is geared to replace everything all the time, as fast as it can, by design.

Now, wait, I can hear the screaming now, but my printing is slow, my spreadsheets take 20 seconds to load, my word processing documents only page on screen as fast as I can press page-down! What are you smoking!? Yes, this is true, but in computer terms, the speed of your spreadsheet load is one thing, but what are the processor, the memory, etc. doing while the disk is reading data? Mostly waiting, what is your system doing while it is waiting for you to press page-down? Waiting. In computer terms, humans are so slow, it would be no surprise if a computer said one day, “Hey, organic life form! Are you asleep or what?”

So, to answer the original question…What is virtualization and can it really work for us? The short answer is…Yes. The long answer is… it is a matter of degree, how well it will work. If all your computing systems are scaled quite well, which is most often not the case, virtualization should always provide some significant gains, which means even more bang for the buck for the typical computing infrastructure. If you use what you have better, you upgrade or replace equipment less often, which establishes total cost of ownership reduction by cost avoidance!

One last point, before everyone goes out and virtualizes everything! Remember, you really are stealing from Peter to give to Paul, in a computing sense. Meaning, that using these previous under utilized resources does have a real and if mishandled, impact on your over all computing performance, so realize that virtualization, although wonderful, must be planned for well, executed very well, and monitored better than you will ever expect. Virtualization requires that your computing infrastructure is well designed, provisioned, maintained, and most important, completely understood in reference to time and space utilization. This is not small endeavor, nor for the amateur. The virtualization learning curve is a steep slope, often just as much art as science. Virtualization mismanaged? You will find yourself in a hole that is both expensive and hard to escape from. No one wants to go from cost avoidance, to cost incurrence!

There are thousands of guides to virtualization, get Google with it, and you will see the scale and scope. But none of case studies will fit your needs out of the box, yes, best practices help, and approaches to avoiding potential pitfalls will be discussed in due course, later in this BLOG, but how you actually implement virtualization will be specific to your needs, expectations and goals. After all, Peter finds out you are stealing for Paul faster than you ever expect! Badda Bing! Badda Boom!

A Proper Virtual World, avoiding potential pitfalls, Virtual System Management, virtualization 101, virtualization getting started

Entry Filed under: A Proper Virtual World, Virtual System Management