Hardware Virtualization tutorial in cloud computing

The tutorial provides the hardware virtualization concepts, advantages of hardware virtualization in the cloud computing environment The tutorial is useful for both beginners and professionals.

What is hardware virtualization ?

The hardware virtualization is the mechanism through which multiple simulated environments or dedicated resources are shared from a single physical hardware . Hardware Virtualization can be achieved by installing HyperVisor as an abstraction layer between the software application and the physical hardware. HyperVisor creates isolated instances called as “Virtual machines” where each VM is installed with Operating System and Software Application to run independently without impacting other running VMs.

The hardware virtualization not only allows to install multiple applications on the single physical server but it alos allows to utilize the maximum physical server capacity which was underutilized on physical servers without virtualization. As each VM runs independently , it allows provided high server performance even though deployed with multiple applications.

Harware Virualization example: VMWare , Microsoft Hyper -V

Virtualization diagram
                                                Virtualization diagram

Advantages of Hardware Virtualization

  • Maximum utilization of server resources
  • Reduces the overall hardware cost
  • Provides highly orchestrated operations to ensure maximum uptime
  • Provides Easy application deployment process

Software Virtualization tutorial in cloud computing

The tutorial provides the software virtualization concepts, advantages of software virtualization in the cloud computing environment The tutorial is useful for both beginners and professionals.

What is software virtualization ?

  • The software virtualization in the cloud computing also called the application virtualization.
  • The software virtualization is the mechanism which is similar to the virtualization process except that it abstracts the software installation procedure and creates a virtual software installation.
  • Each virtual machine is provided the virtual software for processing the application requests. Virtual Box,
  • Virtualized software is an application that will be “installed” into its own self-contained unit.
  • Software Virtualization.examples: VMware , Virtual Box

Advantages of Software Virtualization

  • provides easy client deployment process
  • provides easy software upgrades as each virtual machine uses the same software virtually
  • provides easy and quick software migration among platforms

Top 10 Popular virtualization software

Virtualization SoftwareHost OSGuest OSPrice
Microsoft Hyper -VWindows 64 bitWindows,
Linux
Free
Redhat Virtualization Linux Windows,
Linux
Free
VMWare Workstation PlayerWindowsWindows,
Linux,
Mac OS
Paid
VMWare FusionMac OSWindows,
Linux,
Solaris,
Netware
Paid
Oracle VirtualizationWindows,
Linux,
Mac OS ,
Solaris
Windows,
Linux,
Mac OS ,
Solaris
Free
QEMUAnyAnyFree
Apple Boot CampMac OSWindowsFree
Virtual BoxWindows,
Linux,
Mac OS
Windows,
Linux,
Mac OS
Free
Parallels DesktopMac OSMac OSPaid
Xen ProjectLinux
Windows
works with
hyperscale cloud
FreeSoftware VirtualizationSoftware Virtualization


Server Virtualization tutorial in cloud computing

The tutorial provides the detailing on the Server Virtualization concepts in the cloud environment, types of server virtualization, advantages and usage of server virtualization

What is Server Virtualization ?

Virtualization means “Virtual” and not actual. Virtualization is the technology through which multiple simulated environments or dedicated resources are shared from a single physical hardware. Read what is Virtualization ? for more details.

Server Vitalization is the concept of utilizing the Physical Server resources more efficiently by dividing into multiple unique and isolated Virtual Servers. Without Server Virtualization, the physical server workload was not distributed to the full server capacity and thus servers were underutilized with respect to resources.

Server Virtualization allows each virtual server to act as physical server by running its own applications and operating system. This increases the overall performance for request processing, optimum utilization of resources and thus increasing the overall capacity of each physical server.

Types of Server Virtualization

The below given are the Server Virtualization Types:

1) Full-Virtualization: Full Virtualization is the type of Server Virtualization which uses HyperVisor which acts as the layer between the operating system and the hardware. The HyperVisor are classified into below 2 types:

  • HyperVisor Type1 ( also known as bare metal or native hypervisor) which acts like a lightweight operating system and runs directly on the host’s hardware
  • HyperVisor Type2 ( also known as hosted hypervisor) which runs as a software on top of the operating system

Full Vitalization technique uses hypervisor for communicating directly with the physical server and CPU. It manages and provide the resources to each virtual server and keeps their execution isolated by making them run independently with the usage of hypervisor. Examples of full virtualization are VMware and ESX Servers.

The Full Virtualization depends highly on hypervisor which has its own processing needs which could impact the overall server performance.

2) Para-Virtualization: While Full Virtualization provides each virtual server to run independently with impacting each other, the Para-Virtualization uses the entire network as a unit and thus each operating system in the virutal sever is aware about other existing virtual servers. This reduces the Hypervisor processing needs to manage the operating system and enhances the overall server performance. Examples of para virtualization is Xen.

3) OS-Level Virtualization: The OS level Virtualization also called system level virtualization does not use HyperVisor rather it is the physical server operating system which performs all tasks of Hypervisor and creates virtual servers using the same operating system.

Key Benefits of Server Virtualization

  • Reduces the overall operating costs
  • Provides high server availability
  • Provides ease for managing virtual servers ( stop, restart services) without impacting other running virtual servers
  • increases the overall application performance
  • provides better disaster recovery support

Limitation of Server Virtualization

  • The application hosted using virtual servers are tightly bounded. The failure of server virtualization will impact all those applications.
  • Highly skilled manpower is required to setup the server virtualization
  • Requires high cost as consumes high memory and hardware

Top 10 Significant Cloud Migration Strategies

The tutorial provides the detailing on the cloud migration strategies, what points need to be considered when deciding cloud migrations. The tutorial is useful for both beginners and professional.

Cloud Assessment as part of cloud migration planning

The below given is the Cloud Migration Process to be considered when planning to migrate to cloud environment.

Cloud Migration Process

Cloud Assessment: The cloud migration planning should involve the below points for consider to conclude on the cloud assessment in advance.

Identifying the required Cloud Environment: Cloud planning first step in evaluation should be for the type of environment ( Private Cloud, Public Cloud , Hybrid Cloud) which is required to be used for cloud applications and the associated service models ( IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

Requirement for Physical and Virtual Servers: Need to analyze and identify the complete list of Physical and Virtual Servers to be available in the cloud environment. The overall need for cloud physical or virtual servers cannot be same with the available on-premises servers as all applications will not be moved to cloud. So identification of applications, database servers ( MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle) or conversion of RDBMS Servers to NoSQL Database Servers like Cassandra, MongoDB, CoucheDB need to be analyzed. If application are requires more transformations for the migration to cloud environments, then it is required to be addressed in the planning phase to conclude on the migration cost. We also need to access the VMWare , HyperVisor and Hyper-V Virtulaization softwares which could be the best fit to provide virtual environments.

Identifying the right application(s) for migration: Understand the need of current and legacy application which requires application, software and hardware support. Only applications which are non-critical, new applications to implement business scenarios, or applications which are not managed using old technologies can be moved to cloud with minimal application and environment support changes.

Calculate Total Cost of ownership (TCO): As migration to cloud application is a digital transformation it is associated with the migration cost. The stakeholders should be involved and provided with the comparison of Total Cost of ownership for on-premises application migration and cloud migration provided by cloud service providers. If the Return on Investment is higher in the longer run, then TCO will be justified, else migrating application to cloud environment is not a feasible deal

Cloud Migration Plan: The fully analyzed cloud migration plan should be shared among stakeholders highlighting the activities and process to be followed from planning phase to deployment phase.

Automated Cloud migration Tool: Cloud applications requires more monitoring to ensure that application issues like latency, Database performance , APIs execution, memory management,storage management ,etc..can be tracked in advance and appropriate measures can be taken to avoid application failure. Thus organization should be clearly identifying the automated migration tools which are required to be available for generating monitoring reports.

Application Security: Cloud environments needs to be secured to be prevented from hacking and thus organizations should depend on industry-leading security features provided by cloud service providers. The recommendation security for a specific environment must be applied which includes application data security, storage device security, network resources security , Identity and access security, etc.

Location Transparency: The cloud environments are managed remotely and thus identifying the exact cloud location is not feasible. The multiple organization could share the same hardware platform but it is isolated and none of the organization knows about the actual data repository or application storage area.

This could also be an concern as organization cannot control the environment , install software’s or manages the overall cloud environment and always need to be dependent on the cloud service provider.

Scalable: The benefit of cloud environment is that they can be easily scalable. With few configuration changes, you can scale in and scale out the cloud environment. As scaling the application includes additional cost, organization should be aware about and how much change in configuration will suffice their application requirement.

Low Latency: The cloud environments should be available 24X7 up and running to ensure that application is accessible from any location to the end users.

Data Storage Services: IT Applications requires data storage and for that various RDBMS and NoSQL Databases should be available in the cloud environment for the organization to consume the application data. Cloud Service Providers like Amazon, Azure and Google provides different data storage facilities for immediate data access, non-frequent data access for data reporting and many more, Each organization should decide what sort of data storage will be useful in the long term to maintain application data.


How Cloud Computing is different from Virtualization

The tutorial covers the difference between cloud vs Virtualization concepts. The blog is useful for both beginners and professional.

The cloud and virtualization terms are used in the Cloud Environment and looks to be similar but they have different perspectives. The cloud is the Cloud computing environment which is comprises of different cloud types ( private cloud, public cloud , hybrid cloud) and provides various service models as IaaS ( Infrastructure as a service), PaaS (Platform as a service) ,SaaS (Software as a service). For more details , refer the blog Cloud Computing Tutorial – Overview & Features

Virtualization is the technology through which multiple simulated environments or dedicated resources are shared from a single physical hardware. The Virtualization is achieved by using virtualization software like HyperVisor which is layered on Physical Hardware, helps in abstracting the required machine resources and map these resource to the Virtual Environments called Virtual Machines. The HyperVisor are classified into below 2 types:

  • HyperVisor Type1 ( also known as bare metal or native hypervisor) which acts like a lightweight operating system and runs directly on the host’s hardware. The hypervisor passes through the operating system layer for each respective communication with the Hardware and thus has high latency.
  • HyperVisor Type2 ( also known as hosted hypervisor) which runs as a software on top of the operating system. The hosted hypervisors are also called as client hypervisor as they are mostly used for end users and software testing providing low latency.
Cloud Virtualization Diagram

How Hypervisor provide Virtual Environments

  • HyperVisor is the Virtualization software which helps in creating and running virtual enviornments
  • HyperVisor helps in isolating the operating system and resources and makes it available for creating virtual machines
  • The Physical harware with Hypervisor layed on it is called as the Host
  • The Virtual machines(VMs) using the Hypervisor resources are called as guests
  • The HyperVisor maintains the pool for resources like CPU, memory and storage devices
  • The pool can be accessed by the existing Virtual machines or new Virtual machines
  • The HyperVisor also utilises other operating system components like process scheduler, I/O stack, device drivers, memory manager, security manager, etc..
  • Hypevisor allows to run multiple operating systems like Windows , Linux , Ubuntu and can still manages to share it with the Virtual machines.
  • Virtualization Software examples: VMware, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V are few popular and commonly used Virtualization Software.
Cloud Computing Virtualization
The cloud is the Cloud computing environment which is comprises of different cloud types and cloud service models provided to the user as a service to be
accessed via internet connection.
Virtualization is the technology through which multiple simulated environments or dedicated resources are shared from a single physical hardware
Methodology basedTechnology based
Provides resources as a service to the users for a
specific purpose
Provides pool of resources like CPU, memory, storage by creating virtual machines for various operations
Template based configuration is supportedImage based configuration is supported
Cloud computing is user need basis and could be from few month to years.It is considered to be supported a long term process to support operations
Cloud Computing Cost:
Private cloud: High CAPEX, low OPEX
Public cloud: Low CAPEX, high OPEX
Virtualization cost:
High capital expenditures (CAPEX),
low operating expenses (OPEX)
Scale outCan be scaled up easily
maintains stateless workoadsmaintians stateful workloads
Comparison between Cloud Computing and Virtualization

Private Cloud Overview and Features

The Tutorial provides the basic concept of Private Cloud, Private Cloud diagram, benefits of Private Cloud, limitation of Private Cloud. The tutorial is useful for the beginners and professional and who ever wants to know about the private cloud usage.

We have covered the Cloud Computing Overview in the previous blog. Let’s discuss the Private Cloud in detail.

What is Private Cloud?

  • The Private cloud is an isolated or private cloud environment where systems , applications and resources are accessible within an organization
  • Private cloud is also termed as ‘Internal Cloud’ or ‘Corporate Cloud’
  • Private cloud provides high security and data privacy through firewalls and internal hosting.
  • Business critical applications are deployed on private cloud by organization
  • Microsoft, Elastra-private cloud are few examples of Private Cloud

Advantages of Private Cloud

  • Provides more security on application data
  • Provides more controlled on the environment
  • Provides high performance

Disadvantages Private Cloud

  • Requires skilled manpower
  • Requires high cost in setting up private cloud
  • Accessible within the organization boundaries
  • Less scalable with available internal hosting resources

Hybrid Cloud tutorial for beginners

The Tutorial provides the basic concept of Hybrid Cloud, Hybrid Cloud diagram, benefits of Hybrid Cloud, limitation of Hybrid Cloud. The tutorial is useful for the beginners and professional and who ever wants to know about the hybrid cloud usage.

We have covered the Cloud Computing Overview in the previous blog. Let’s discuss the Hybrid Cloud in detail.

What is Hybrid Cloud?

  • Hybrid Cloud is the cloud computing type which is a mix of Public Cloud and Private Cloud.
  • Hybrid Cloud allows to create a unified, automated, and well-managed computing environment
  • Business critical applications are managed and secured using Private Cloud
  • Non-critical applications can be deployed and managed through Public cloud
  • Hybrid cloud provider companies are Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Cisco
  • Banking Applications could be considered as Hybrid Cloud

Advantages of Hybrid Cloud

  • Provides flexibility to an organization to decide which applications are to be deployed on private or public cloud
  • Provides additional Security to critical applications deployed on private cloud
  • Provides cost effectiveness
  • Reduces overall risk for critical applications
  • Provides scalability

Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud

  • Managing private cloud and public cloud increase complex networking requirements
  • Requires to incorporate organization security compliance
  • Requires additional manpower for managing networking and private cloud setup
  • Requires reliability on both public and private cloud environments up and running


Public Cloud tutorial for beginners

The Tutorial provides the basic concept of Public Cloud, Public Cloud diagram, benefits of Public Cloud, limitation of Public Cloud. The tutorial is useful for the beginners and professional and who ever wants to know about the public cloud usage.

We have covered the Cloud Computing Overview in the previous blog. Let’s discuss the Public Cloud in detail.

What is Public Cloud?

  • The public cloud is cloud hosting where user is allowed to access the system and services via internet. Public clouds are considered as shared platform among various clients or user provided by cloud service providers.
  • Public cloud charges are calculated as pay-per-use model where the user is charged only for services being used.
  • Public cloud examples: Microsoft Azure, IBM’s Blue Mix Cloud, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Google Cloud

The below given is the Public cloud Diagram where cloud environment is owned by the Cloud Service Providers and each client or organization gets the shared platform as per the need ( Infrastructure, Software’s and Development Platform) . The Cloud environment provides advanced security features and users mapped with roles and responsibility can login. Multiple organization might be using the same Data Center or Region but still they are separately logically.

Public cloud Diagram

Advantages of Public Cloud

  • Lower Cost: The public clouds are cheaper as they work on the shared platform concept
  • Pay per use: The public cloud charges for the services being consumed.
  • Location Independent: Public Clouds are location independent and thus can be accessed from anywhere via internet connection
  • No Maintenance Required: The Public cloud software installation , upgrades and server management are totally owned by the cloud service providers
  • Scalability: The public clouds provides easy scalability options through configurations
  • Reliability: The public clouds are always available without much interruption and thus makes it high reliable

Disadvantages of Public Cloud

  • Less control: As public clouds are owned by cloud service provides, it does provide much control to the end user
  • High Internet Speed: Public cloud performance depends on the availability of high internet speed
  • Security concern: Public Cloud is less secure because resources are shared publicly

Beginner’s guide for Cloud Computing tutorial online

The tutorial provides the basic concepts of cloud computing, cloud computing overview and features, increasing demand for cloud computing applications, characteristics and advantages of cloud computing, cloud deployment models, cloud service models. The cloud computing tutorial is useful for both beginners and professionals.

What is cloud ?

The cloud term depicts the usage of application through internet or network. In other words, applications which are not installed within the organization premises but can be accessed by organization staff through network ( LAN, WAN, VPN) or internet.

What is cloud computing ?

Cloud computing is the virtualization based technology which allows users to create, configure, install applications, development platform, security services, virtual machines, servers and memory allocation, database servers including NoSQL databases like MongoDB, CouchDB, Cassandra, File processing, image processing, documents and videos via an internet connection. These applications are not installed and managed locally but are provided as services to the end users based on their need. Amazon AWS Cloud Services, Microsoft Azure Cloud Services , Oracle Cloud Services and Google Cloud Services are the few popular cloud service providers.

Cloud computing provides the platform independence as it is managed by cloud service providers and not installed locally and thus makes it more suitable options for the customers for reducing their hardware cost, software cost and maintenance and upgrade of the overall infrastructure.

What are Cloud Types ?

The availability of applications to the customers are broadly divided into below given types:

Cloud Types Diagram
  • Private Cloud: The Private cloud is an isolated or private cloud environment where systems , applications and resources are accessible within an organization.
  • Public Cloud: The public cloud is an cloud environment where systems , applications and resources are accessible to the general public.
  • Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud is a mix of private cloud and public cloud where critical applications are maintained and accessed through private cloud and non-critical applications are managed and accessed by public cloud. For example , Banking Applications with customer and business data could be managed through private cloud and Banking process , user complaints and other non-critical applications through public cloud.
  • Community Cloud: The community cloud allows systems , applications and resources to be accessible through group of organizations.

Cloud Service Models

The cloud service providers like Amazon, Microsoft , Oracle and Google provides the cloud environment to their customers based on the below given cloud service models:

  • SaaS (Software-as-a-service) : SaaS is the computing service which allows users to access the software applications as a service. Oracle Cloud Procurement, Oracle Cloud Financials are few commonly used software applications.
  • PaaS (Platform-as-a-service): PaaS is the cloud computing service where provides the cloud environment for application development, application deployment and application tools, etc
  • IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service): IaaS is the cloud computing service which allows users to manage the Infrastructure through internet. Users can configure the required physical servers, virtual servers, memory allocation based on their usage.
Cloud Service Model Diagram

Increase demand of Cloud computing

The cloud services are becoming popular among the users due to the below given advantages:

  • The cloud applications are accessible to the users as a service via internet
  • The cloud applications are configurable as per the user need
  • The hardware and software installations , maintenance and upgrade is managed by the cloud service providers
  • PaaS service provides the development platform, development and deployment tools.
  • The cloud computing provides users the option to access cloud application based on pay-per-use model which includes charges as per the usage of services.
  • The cloud computing provides different ways for data storage for file, images and application data. Users can also classify which data is required for immediate access and which is required for data reporting and cloud service charges applicable accordingly.
  • The cloud computing provides advanced security features which also makes it a secure option for data processing.

Limitation of Cloud computing

Although cloud computing provides numerous advantages but still has some limitations

  • Customer will have limited control as cloud environments are owned and managed by cloud service providers.
  • Cloud applications are accessible through internet. Slow internet connectivity may leads to the slowness of the application
  • Usage of cloud applications over internet open the threat of misuse of critical client data through hacking.
  • Customers using the specific cloud service provider cannot shift or transfer to another cloud service provider as each cloud service provider has its own cloud platforms and thus requires high efforts in redeploying and stabilizing the running applications