Worksheet - 1: Cloud Computing and Virtualization - My Understanding

     What do I understand about Cloud Computing?

    To say about Cloud Computing, simply it means accessing the resources such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the internet which refers to the word cloud. Here the customer/user makes use of the already available ready-made resources and accesses them online instead of using their local infrastructure. We can access cloud based resources anywhere on the world as long as we have an internet connection and it offers high performance than the local on-site data center.

               What we do here is we pay only for cloud services we use which helps lower our costs and run the system more efficiently and flexible with our need to change. For example if you want to have a database which can be accessed from anywhere and you don’t want to put lots of effort in maintaining it, we can use cloud storage which protects your data more safely and even at massive scales by transferring the data over the internet to a cloud storage system that’s accessible from any location and any device.

 

So Now, Virtualization…

               With Virtualization we can run multiple Operating Systems and applications on same machine and its same hardware at the same time.

Types of Virtualization:

1.      Application Virtualization

A User can have remote access of an application from a server which stores all personal details and other information of the application and it can run on a local machine through internet.

For example if I need to execute three different versions of a same software, the technologies that use this application virtualization use some kind of hosted applications or sometimes packaged application.

 

2.      Network Virtualization

Here a user can run multiple Virtual Networks with each has a separate control and data plan. It co-exists together on top of one physical network.

For example, the usage of Virtual Private Network(VPN) we can run multiple networks and routers, which can be managed by groups among themselves for more security.

 

3.      Desktop Virtualization

This allows a user’s OS to be stored on a remote server and access their desktop virtually from any location by a different machine.

If I want to work on Linux OS but I only have Windows on my PC and I don’t want to install Linux, I can use Desktop Virtualization.

 

4.      Storage Virtualization

A group of servers which aren’t aware of their data and managed by a single repository system by a virtual storage mechanism.

For example, you can manage your storage from a console and take advantage of pooling resources together to create a scalable storage solution. Not only that, but you can pool small to medium size hard drives together and get one massive drive that you can split up between various machines.

 

5.      Server Virtualization

A physical server is divided into multiple different virtual servers by changing the identity number, processors. So, each system can operate its own operating systems in solitary manner.

For example, on a virtualized server we can’t identify the total number of operating systems, processors, or other virtualized servers on the physical server. And also we  can only use the maximum memory or CPU cycles allocated with their instance, preventing them from affecting other users on the server.

 

6.      Data virtualization

Here the data from various sources are collected and managed at a single source without knowing anything about the way that they are collected, stored and formatted.  

Let’s say you are relocating to a place and all your data servers are in your old place which might be a hectic process to move. So instead of moving those data servers to he new location, data virtualization allows you to access and manipulate those data in the servers through virtualization layer in real time.