What is Virtualization in Cloud Computing

If you’ve got an ear in the tech or business world, you can hear a lot of terms flying around – and if you’re in the know, you’ll realize that many of these terms are used incorrectly. We’re going to talk about two of those terms today: virtualization and cloud computing.

Here’s how we’re going to break things down. We’re going to start by explaining what virtualization is, then we’re going to look at what cloud computing is. From there, we’ll compare and contrast the two. Finally, we’ll look at how virtualization and cloud computing work together to create the complex cloud infrastructure we all know and use today.

If that sounds good to you, read on!

What is virtualization?

Simply put, virtualization is a method by which hardware resources can be shared by a number of different users or environments.

Here’s how it works. A hypervisor is installed – either directly on the hardware, or in an operating system. The computer it was installed on is known as the “host”. That hypervisor then creates a number of virtual machines that use the host’s physical infrastructure to emulate any number of different environments, from operating systems to entire servers.

You may have used virtualization in your own life – when you partition a hard drive so that it can run multiple operating systems, you’ve performed a kind of virtualization.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing, at its most basic, is the delivering of computing services over the internet. 

Your email? Cloud computing. Surfing the Web? In its most literal sense, that’s cloud computing. 

When most people talk about cloud computing, they’re talking about one of three services:

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS): This is the most commonly used form of cloud computing. Anything from accounting software to Microsoft 365 is considered SaaS – if it’s software you’re accessing through the internet, especially for a subscription fee, it’s considered SaaS.
• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS): Delivers a framework upon which businesses can create custom applications. Google App Engine is a PaaS.
• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): Delivers computing infrastructure. Commonly used when companies don’t want to invest in purchasing and maintaining their own servers. 

How do cloud computing and virtualization differ?

As you can see, cloud computing and virtualization aren’t the same thing at all. Virtualization allows you to share hardware resources between multiple different users for a variety of different applications. Cloud computing offers computing services over the internet.

There can be virtualization without cloud computing – just think about the hard drive partition we discussed earlier. There can be cloud computing without virtualization – you could, for example, access a simple online game that’s hosted and maintained entirely on one server. 

Practically speaking, however, virtualization and cloud computing almost always go hand-in-hand. Like peanut butter and jam, you can find them separate, but you’ll usually find them together – they complement each other.

How virtualization and cloud computing work together

Let’s start with the most obvious use of virtualization in conjunction with cloud computing: IaaS. 

Servers take a lot of infrastructure to run. You need storage space. You need RAM. You need – well, we’re not going to keep listing the hardware you need, but you need a lot.

But, when you migrate to Cloud computing & storage, you need a server recycle & disposal service, in order to get rid of the existing ‘defunct’ infrastructure, after migrating to Cloud. This is exactly where Newark based technology experts like “Dataknox” can help in storage infrastructure and IT asset management or disposition.

Computer hardware works well with economies of scale. By hosting a number of large servers in one location, you can cool them all simultaneously – and connect them all to the internet. Hardware also becomes more cost-effective at scale. But two companies don’t want to share the same server space – they need their own discreet limits, separate from one another’s resources.

Virtualization does everything we just described. We can share the hardware of one very powerful host among a number of guests, allocating resources between each of them.

This also makes scalability possible – if a guest needs more storage or computing power, you can simply increase the share of resources that virtual machine (VM) receives.

It’s simple to see how these same principles can apply to PaaS and virtualization. App developers will need their own storage and computing power, isolated from other users. This adds security and scalability, and ensures that developers can test their apps in a sterile environment.

In many cases, SaaS providers will also use virtualization – but it’s atypical to see them using virtualization in a way that the end-user interacts with meaningfully.

We hope this brief explanation of virtualization and cloud computing has been helpful! The concepts can be a bit intimidating – this is only the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, a little understanding can go a long way. Want to get a better grasp of the subject? Download something like VirtualBox and start playing around!