Why Virtualize?
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@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
If it wasn't cheaper, it wouldn't have been used as much.
I always say to never use this..... because I can show lots of times that the acquisition cost was the same, but I've never been able to show a case where they shouldn't virtualize. Of course, at the end of the day, cost is the final motivation because all business decisions are about cost. But it's about the TCO over the system lifespan, not how much it costs to operate or acquire.
Thinking that it is about cost is what leads people to think that somehow doing physical for 1:1 deployments is okay, when that should always be virtualized, too.
TCO is cost. Total cost should always be the cost to look at regardless.
That's true. It's just not what people think when people say cost. They leave out the bigger picture that includes overall risk over time. Almost no one evaluates the cost of risk into their TCO, even though it is one of the biggest cost factors.
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I'll add my two cents.
I use this analogy to explain it to my boss. Virtualization is kind of like an apartment building or hotel, where the building and utilities are all shared by the rooms. The building is the physical server and utilities are the resources (CPU, RAM, Storage, Network). The rooms are the VMs (guests).
One of the reasons you would virtualize is to get more bang for your buck out of the hardware, whose resources are often idle or severely under-utilized for the majority of the time. Like others have mentioned, you have savings on physical hardware, power, cooling, density (physical space for servers), etc.
Other reasons include
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Portability of VMs (guests), as they are just files. This extends life-span of the VM OS, as it can run on any hardware just by simply migrating it.
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Snapshots of VMs to roll back to a point in time. For instance, prior to installing updates or making other significant changes.
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Faster server provisioning (using templates).
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Just addressing the "why" here.
You have a software widget that requires 1/2 of a CPU core and 512MB RAM. Even the most basic server is going to have 10x the resources required to run said widget. Why would you want to pay to run all those resources to do only 1 widget when you can run 10?
There are also advantages to recovery when hardware does die. I think someone already mentioned here. Hardware dies, install hypervisor on new hardware, restore, done. No dealing with trying to add drivers and other silly things after the fact.
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@wrx7m said in Why Virtualize?:
Portability of VMs (guests), as they are just files.
With the exceptions of using LVM Thin volumes instead of files.
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@black3dynamite said in Why Virtualize?:
@wrx7m said in Why Virtualize?:
Portability of VMs (guests), as they are just files.
With the exceptions of using LVM Thin volumes instead of files.
Right. MOST things that people associate with virtualization, like how the files are stored, are conventions and not part of virtualization itself. Non-virtual systems can do this, too, and virtual systems can skip it.
Hardware abstraction is the only universal component of virtualization.
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
@Emad-R said in Why Virtualize?:
why waste all resources on single OS ? what if a program runs better on specific OS what will you do then ? Also if virus infects single OS your screwed
So by Virtualizing you're spreading out the resources to different OS's ?
i understand the program needing specifics or running better you'd want to have a way to get there,
what does virus protection have to do with single os?Why dont you watch some series about this first then come bk and ask us the hard questions
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@Emad-R said in Why Virtualize?:
@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
@Emad-R said in Why Virtualize?:
why waste all resources on single OS ? what if a program runs better on specific OS what will you do then ? Also if virus infects single OS your screwed
So by Virtualizing you're spreading out the resources to different OS's ?
i understand the program needing specifics or running better you'd want to have a way to get there,
what does virus protection have to do with single os?Why dont you watch some series about this first then come bk and ask us the hard questions
... These questions have already been answered though..
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@WrCombs In the end, its fun to play with when your learning. If you manage servers you will obviously have more business reasons to do it. Until then, pick either hyper-v or kvm, which are hypervisors. Then read or watch videos on that technology. Then use an old desktop or laptop to play around with. I know you can get everything installed with kvm in a single command. From there you can use the command line or a gui to make vm's. In stall an OS in one of the vm's, play a bit, destroy it, do another. Then learn to script and automate it. Keep breaking stuff and learning about it. Its all fun and that is very roughly the process you will end up doing. At least thats what I did.
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@jmoore said in Why Virtualize?:
Until then, pick either hyper-v or kvm, which are hypervisors.
With those two, I would definitely get familiar with using powershell to manage Hyper-V and
virshto manage KVM. -
@WrCombs Also remember once you have vm's setup and running they are just files. So that also makes it real easy to backup with robocopy, veeam, rsync or borg. Its one of the many great advantages of virtualizing, your expanding your options alot.
