There Is a Computer Virtual Machine in Your Personal and Professional Lives - Part 1

What is Computer Virtualization? What is Virtual3. Virtual machines are encapsulated into files, making
Machine VM? The following are some excerpts aboutit possible to rapidly save, copy and provision a virtual
this extraodinary boom that will change the currentmachine. Full systems (fully configured applications,
IT world in the next two or three years. In myoperating systems, BIOS and virtual hardware) can
opinion this boom will be equivalent to the PC boombe moved, within seconds, from one physical server
30 years ago.to another for zero-downtime maintenance and
1. Virtualization software allows a single computer tocontinuous workload consolidation.
create several virtual, rather than actual, versions of4. More companies are now realizing the benefits of
a computing environment. With virtualization, oneserver optimization and consolidation to attain the full
physical machine can host multiple virtual versions ofpotential of their hardware investments. Virtualization
an operating system and run them simultaneously.technology has emerged as an effective way of
2. Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines, withimplementing consolidation and maximizing computing
heterogeneous operating systems to run in isolation,capacity while reducing server count.
side-by-side on the same physical machine. Each5. The Virtualization infrastructure approach to IT
virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardwaremanagement creates virtual services out of the
(e.g., RAM, CPU, NIC, etc.) upon which an operatingphysical IT infrastructure, enabling administrators to
system and applications are loaded. The operatingallocate these virtual resources quickly to the
system sees a consistent, normalized set ofbusiness units that need them most.
hardware regardless of the actual physical hardwareThis article continue in the Part 2.
components.