Virtualization Technologies
Traditional System Configuration
in traditional server systems, applications are ran directly on top of the host operating system. If we have applications that needs isolation, we need to have a dedicated physical server for each of them, despite the fact that a single server would have enough resources to run multiple applications.
It is inefficient and very expensive in this scenario. To solve this problem, we use virtualization to allow running multiple operating systems on the same physical server.
Virtualization
With virtualization, instead of installing applications directly on top of the physical server host operating system, we install a hypervisor on top of the physical server, then install guest operating systems in virtual machines. Those virtual machines are managed by the hypervisor, that is also called virtual machine manager or VMM.
An hypervisor is software that seats on top of a bare metal server to allow the sharing of resources between multiple operating systems (also called guess operating systems). There are two types of hypervisors: Type 1 hypervisor that seats directly on top of bare metal server, and Type 2 hypervisor that is a software package installed on a host operating system.
Running multiple operating systems on a single host, allows saving money, time, and space since VM management is easier, and we have less physical equipment to purchase, install, and manage.
Popular Hypervisors
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VMWare ESXi
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Oracle OVM/OLVM
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Microsoft Hyper-V
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Citrix Xen Server
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RedHat KVM
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Proxmox VE
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XCP-ng
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Incus
VMWare ESXi
I have some lab experience with VirtualBox, Proxmox, and Incus but not VMWare yet. That is about to change. Since I am also looking into oportunities in data centers, I think it is a good time to start learning about VMWare technologies along with my system and network automation journey I recently started.