Cloud Computing & Virtualization - Technology Options

Cloud computing is changing the IT world in a wayconvinced of the value, he can move to more robust
which is unprecedented in last decade. The economyVMware vSphere stack.
of scale and predicable performance is pushing cloudMicrosoft
computing across the enterprises. A significant partMicrosoft's cloud offerings have the Hyper-V and the
of the cloud-computing infrastructure available inWindows Azure Platform which is a development
world consists of reliable services delivered throughplatform for ISVs to build applications on
data centers such as Amazon. In principle,Hyper-V: Microsoft Hyper-V is a hypervisor based
cloud-computing customers do not own the physicalvirtualization system that can be used for x64
infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure bycomputers. Hyper-V can be used to enable a very
renting usage from a third-party provider.reliable and cost effective virtualization solution.
Although cloud computing is a very promisingHyper-V supports mixed OS virtualization with
paradigm, still not every company would want to useWindows and Linux systems. In the latest Hyper-V
public clouds. Especially for core applications andServer 2008 R2 provides features like live migration
applications with sensitive data, enterprises leanand cluster shared volume support.
towards private clouds.Windows Azure platform: Windows Azure Platform
There are many technology options available todayoffers a flexible, familiar environment for developers
for cloud computing.to create cloud applications and services. With
VMwareWindows Azure, you can shorten your time to
VMware is the industry’s first cloud operatingmarket and adapt as demand for your service grows.
system, transforming IT infrastructures into a privateThe OS component of Windows Azure is what
cloud. High availability, performance and reliability ofprovides the plumbing for development, service
VMware with cost-effective solutions are specialhosting and service management.
advantages for small IT environments.Xen
VMware brings unique characteristics to cloudXen is an open source cloud-computing project
computing, designed to serve the needs ofinitiated by Citrix. Main goal of the project is to build
businesses that want production-level performanceopen standards for virtualization management,
and reliability, on and off premise.improve the allocation of virtual workloads including
VMware vSphere: Leveraging key technologytransitioning workloads between datacenters, build a
advancements found in VMware vSphere, users getvirtual switch, and enable massive cloud
the assurance that applications can be managed,infrastructures.
moved and operated in the cloud as they do onsite.Latest offering Xen 4.0 adds significant memory and
VMware vSphere aggregates and holistically managessecurity optimizations that will drive virtualization
large pools of infrastructure—processors, storageinfrastructure to an entirely new class of
and networking as a seamless, flexible and dynamicperformance. As a result, virtualization is made
operating environment.suitable for all workloads, even network intensive and
VMware ESXi and VMWare Server: Besides vSphere,high performance computing applications that would
VMware also offers VMware ESXi, which can behave previously experienced compromised
used as initial virtualization platforms. Once user isperformance on any hypervisor.