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Understanding virtualization
New software, from operating systems to applications, constantly demands more. More data, more processing power, more memory. Virtualization makes a single physical machine act like multiple—saving you the cost of more servers and workstations.
What is virtualization?
Virtualization is technology that allows you to create multiple simulated environments or dedicated resources from a single, physical hardware system. Software called a hypervisor connects directly to that hardware and allows you to split 1 system into separate, distinct, and secure environments known as virtual machines (VMs). These VMs rely on the hypervisor’s ability to emulate the physical machine’s resources and distribute them appropriately.
Ideally, all related VMs are managed through a single web-based virtualization management console, which speeds things up. Virtualization lets you dictate how much processing power, storage, and memory to give VMs, saving you money. Environments are better protected since VMs are separated from their supporting hardware and each other.
Virtualization creates the environments and resources you need from underused hardware–and a lot of things can be virtualized.
What can you do with virtualization?
Server virtualization
A single server can be made to act like a couple—or hundreds.
Operating system virtualization
1 computer can run multiple different operating systems.
Network functions virtualization
Isolated, virtual networks can be created from 1 original network.
How are virtual machines managed?
Virtualization management software is designed to—well—make virtualization more manageable. Sure, you can manually allocate resources into VMs, make space for them on servers, test them, and install patches as needed. But splitting single systems into hundreds means multiplying the work needed to keep those systems running, up to date, and secure. Operations teams may not get custom VMs fast enough while IT departments are handcuffed by all those manual processes.
Each virtualization management system is unique, but most feature an uncomplicated user interface, streamline the VM creation process, monitor the virtual environment, allocate resources, compile reports, and automatically enforce rules. There are even virtualization management solutions that integrate across hardware and software brands—allowing users to install the management system that’s best for them.
What's the difference between virtualization and cloud computing?
It's easy to confuse the 2, particularly because they both revolve around separating resources from hardware to create a useful environment. Think about it like this:
- Virtualization is a technology that separates functions from hardware
- Cloud computing is more of a solution that relies on that split
Virtualization helps create clouds, but that doesn’t make it cloud computing.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology cites 5 features of cloud computing: a network, pooled resources, a user interface, provisioning capabilities, and automatic resource control/allocation. While virtualization creates the network and pooled resources, additional management and operating system software is needed to create a user interface, provision VMs, and control/allocate resources.
Aren't VMs just containers?
Virtualization provisions the resources that containers can use. These VMs are environments in which containers can run, but containers aren’t tied to virtual environments.
VMs have finite capabilities because the hypervisors that create them are tied to the finite resources of a physical machine. Containers, on the other hand, share the same operating system kernel and package applications with their runtime environments so the whole thing can be moved, opened, and used across development, testing, and production configurations.
Why choose Red Hat?
Red Hat has supported virtualization development for a long time. We’ve been improving the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor—part of the Linux® kernel—and contributing to KVM and oVirt since both communities were founded. Now, the KVM hypervisor is the core of all major OpenStack and Linux virtualization distributions and is the base of many Red Hat products. It’s gone on to set records for overall performance and for running the largest quantity of well-performing VMs on a single server.
Because the technology is open source, our virtualization products are designed for, tested, and certified on a broad range of servers and hardware, letting you use the infrastructure you already have. We’ve even collaborated with Microsoft to certify and support various configurations. So whether you create a handful of VMs on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux or are managing hundreds of Windows-based VMs with Red Hat Virtualization, we’ll stand by the subscription with 24/7 technical support, ongoing delivery, expertise, and certification commitments.
Think about it—you can use more of the hardware you have to run the systems you’re familiar with on 1 of the world’s most powerful virtualization infrastructures with the confidence that comes with award-winning worldwide support.
Keep exploring virtualization
Blog
All the pieces you need to start using virtualization
This is all you need. Really. Install it on anything—from bare-metal hardware to open source or proprietary systems—and start deploying virtual machines by the dozens or hundreds with a hypervisor that can handle it and a management platform that makes it easy.
Run your virtualization distributions on an operating system that features military-grade security, 99.999% uptime, and support for business-critical workloads. It’s the operating system our virtualization software was meant to run on.