What are the advantages of virtualization?

Virtualization is the name for the creation of virtual, i. H. not physical, resources on a computer system. Here, an additional abstraction layer between an application (e.g. an operating system) and a resource (e.g. the hardware over which the operating system usually has exclusive control) is created through the emulation of hardware, a data memory, an operating system or network resources. By means of this abstraction layer, the application is given different physical conditions than actually exist, in that the actual hardware is emulated by this layer. A distinction is made between software and hardware virtualization.

An example of software virtualization is operating system virtualization. A virtual runtime environment for computer programs is provided within a closed container (jails), which represents a subset of the guest operating system. In contrast to system virtualization using a hypervisor, however, it is not possible to operate a different operating system than the host system. In particular, no other kernels or drivers can be loaded in the containers.

Another example is application virtualization. The server or desktop applications are executed locally without requiring local installation. The virtual application is embedded in a virtual environment that provides files, registry entries and other components. These are required by the application to avoid conflicts with the operating system or other applications.

An example of system virtualization at the hardware level is the partitioning of a simple large resource such as hard disk space or network bandwidth into multiple small resources of the same type. This is also referred to as zoning, especially in storage networks.

Further examplesand advantages are processor virtualization, memory virtualization and virtual networks.

You can find more information on the topic here.

In addition to our dedicated server, we at centron also offer virtual systems from the cloud.