What Is Virtualization? Benefits, Types, and Future Trends

The term “virtualization” sounds like something from a futuristic sci-fi movie where people drive flying cars and communicate through brain waves. But it’s not so futuristic; it’s actually been around since the 1960s as a way to create multiple computers from a single machine. I’ll explain.

Imagine slicing a computer system into multiple mini-computers, each with an independent operating system and dedicated hardware resources. That’s virtualization.

As the name suggests, these “mini-computers” are virtual instances called virtual machines (VMs). They’re isolated from one another and mimic a physical system.

Throughout this article, you’ll learn the benefits, types, and workings of virtualization technology, popular providers, challenges and considerations, real-world applications, the future of the technology, and how to implement it in your tech stack.

Virtualization is crucial to enterprise IT environments, as it enables rapid setup and cloud migration, more straightforward disaster recovery, high availability, lower operating costs, and improved resource utilization.

While you can create numerous virtual machines on a single physical system, you must consider efficient resource distribution to reap the technology’s benefits.

Virtualization increases the use and flexibility of hardware resources and is a staple in cloud computing. Here are some insights into the origins of virtualization, key milestones, technological advancements, and the core concepts the marvel entails.

History and Evolution

The 1960s saw numerous historical milestones, including the first steps of mankind on the moon, the rise of Muhammad Ali, a new era of fashion and music, the Vietnam War, and the advent of virtualization technology.

IBM is a pioneer in virtualization and worked extensively on developing time-sharing solutions in the 1960s and 70s.

One of the earliest success stories was IBM’s CP/CMS time-sharing operating system (OS), which provided users with a simulated, isolated IBM System/360 computer instance.

While the 1980s were relatively uneventful, the 1990s saw virtualization make waves in the IT industry and the launch of VMware, the most popular virtualization provider.

Paravirtualization was introduced in the 2000s, allowing communication between the hypervisor and the guest operating system. This improved performance and efficiency.

Modern virtualization now focuses on cloud capabilities.

Core Concepts

The key component in virtualization is the hypervisor, also known as the virtual machine monitor (VMM). It’s software that abstracts physical hardware resources and divides them among multiple virtual machines (VMs).

There are two types of hypervisors: Type 1 (bare metal) and Type 2 (hosted). Type 1 hypervisors are preferred because they act like a lightweight OS and have direct access to hardware resources — they’re more secure and efficient than Type 2 hypervisors, which can only indirectly access the hardware.

In the next section, we’ll explore the types of virtualization: server, network, desktop, application, and storage. This will give you a better idea of their applications.

Virtualization allows you to create virtual representations of physical machines such as servers, networks, desktops, and storage devices. Each type is unique.

For example, application virtualization doesn’t “split” a software application into tiny bits. Instead, it abstracts an app from the underlying OS and hardware resources. Here is an overview of each virtualization type and its benefits.

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization boosts server utilization by breaking a physical server into several isolated virtual instances. Typically, only 15-25% of a server is used at a given time; server virtualization can boost this to as much as 80%.

Other benefits of server virtualization include enhanced uptime, reliability, availability, quicker provisioning and deployment, reduced hardware and maintenance costs, and better disaster recovery and backup solutions.

Leading server virtualization vendors include VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle.

Network Virtualization

Network virtualization involves combining hardware and software resources from multiple physical networks into a single virtual entity or dividing a physical network into numerous independent virtual networks.

Its benefits include greater operational efficiency, reduced network provisioning times, improved network security, and increased workload independence.

Key technologies and solutions include VMware NSX and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).

Desktop Virtualization

If you’re on the go and want to access your desktop environment from any computing device, desktop virtualization may appeal to you.

Desktop virtualization involves creating a software-based or virtual instance of your desktop environment and associated apps. Deployment models such as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and DaaS (Desktop as a Service) are used for this.

Application Virtualization

Application virtualization involves trickery. It deceives a software application into believing it’s running on the operating system of the physical computer it was initially installed on.

It allows users to run virtual app instances on almost any device as long as it’s connected to a secure internet connection without having actually to install the app.

Popular application virtualization tools include Microsoft App-V and Citrix XenApp.

Storage Virtualization

Storage virtualization treats all physical storage resources within a network as a single entity—they are pooled and can be centrally accessed and managed.

It involves technologies including SAN, NAS, and software-defined storage. It makes storage provisioning easier for VMs and enables an organization to maximize available network storage.

Virtualization enables physical computer hardware to be used more efficiently and is the cornerstone of cloud computing.

You’ve already learned terms such as hypervisor and virtual machine — let’s examine them in detail. We’ll also explore containerization, a lightweight alternative to virtualization.

Hypervisors

Hypervisor software creates an abstraction layer over the host operating system and physical hardware resources.

It creates VMs and allocates hardware resources such as computing power, memory, and storage space to them. The software also translates requests between VMs and physical hardware.

As previously discussed, there are two types of hypervisors: type 1 and type 2.

Type 1 hypervisors have direct access to the host computer system’s hardware. Since each VM runs a guest operating system and is isolated, they offer higher performance, security, and efficiency than type 2 hypervisors and are ideal for enterprise use.

Some advanced type 1 hypervisors also support networking.

Type 2 hypervisors, on the other hand, rely on the host OS to manage hardware and network resource calls and have limited use cases.

Virtual Machines (VMs)

Hypervisors are responsible for creating and managing VMs. Each VM runs a guest operating system with dedicated resources, including CPU power, memory, and storage space.

VMs are isolated from one another, meaning each instance behaves as an individual system and can’t be influenced by the failure of another. Even if one fails catastrophically, as long as the underlying hardware is still running, all other VMs on the system will be unaffected.

Additionally, unless programmed otherwise, VMs can’t interact with one another or share data such as network settings and security configurations.

Containers

Containerization is a fascinating alternative to virtualization for running software applications and has recently gained momentum. It involves bundling software code and all its dependencies into a lightweight, highly-compatible executable called a container.

Containers share the host operating system’s kernel, use fewer resources than VMs, and are an excellent choice for portable and scalable apps. Examples of containerization technologies include Docker and Kubernetes.

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between the technologies for your enterprise IT architecture — you can use containerization to run an application (for greater portability) and virtualization to supply it with the underlying infrastructure (for greater security).

Many enterprise servers operate at a fraction of their capacity and are dedicated to specific applications. This is inefficient and costly, as excess capacity remains unused.

Virtualization addresses these issues and offers several other benefits, including enhanced disaster recovery and security through isolation.

Cost Savings

When a non-virtualized environment sits idle, its computing resources can’t be put to use.

Virtualizing physical hardware is more cost-effective, as each virtual machine runs its own operating system and can handle different applications while being hosted on the same physical hardware.

This ensures the most effective use of available resources and lowers the costs associated with purchasing and operating more hardware.

Improved Resource Utilization

Instead of purchasing multiple physical hardware units and managing complex IT infrastructure, virtualizing an existing system leads to more efficient use of computing resources.

You can easily create or remove VMs and provide resources for your business needs.

Some common resources include servers, storage, networks, desktops, applications, memory, and GPU.

If the need arises (a growing business is bound to require more resources at some stage), you can purchase more physical hardware to virtualize.

Enhanced Disaster Recovery

Imagine a non-virtualized server is affected by a disaster like equipment failure.

The server must be repaired, which may take several hours or even days and could disrupt business continuity.

A server with virtual machines, on the other hand, can easily be replicated and moved to another server.

VMs are easy to replicate and migrate to other servers, so in the event of a hardware failure, VMs can be transferred to a functioning server with minimal downtime.

Features such as snapshots also ensure you can return to a particular state. Virtualization cuts down the disaster recovery time to mere minutes.

Security and Isolation

Virtual machines operate independently and are highly secure.

This means if one VM is down, others will remain unaffected.

However, since they share the same networking components, they’re still subject to the same security risks as the host system (such as malware).

While isolating an issue on one VM is easy, you’ll still need to follow best practices for system security.

Fortunately, virtualization makes security maintenance much more efficient.

You’ll only have to install, update, and maintain VM environments through a single console instead of tediously and manually maintaining vast IT infrastructure.

VMware, Oracle, Microsoft Azure, and Citrix are some of the most renowned virtualization providers.

If you’re a business leader and want to take advantage of virtualization, go for a trusted solution, no matter how glossy the competition may seem on paper. Here’s why these providers shine the brightest.

VMware

VMware is the “OG” of the virtualization world. The VMware vSphere virtualization platform consists of a bare-metal hypervisor, ESXi Server, and vCenter Server, a centralized administration application to manage ESXi Servers and their respective virtual machines.

Platform features include enhanced operational efficiency, boosted workload performance (with support for AI/ML workloads), accelerated innovation, elevated security, improved lifecycle management, and comprehensive security and compliance.

Oracle

Oracle’s virtualization platform, Oracle Virtualization, offers three core open-source products: Oracle Linux KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox, and Oracle VM Server. You can download the software from the official website.

Each product is designed for the hybrid cloud and offers a modern, cost-effective hypervisor, enterprise-grade performance, increased IT efficiency and agility, robust security, and a zero downtime promise.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is a secure and reliable platform for creating Linux and Windows VMs.

It offers features including:

• Automatic VM scaling
• Accelerated network and storage performance
• Rapid backups and disaster recovery solutions
• Support for multiple operating systems
• Built-in monitoring and management
• Cutting-edge AI and high-performance applications

We recommend using Microsoft’s VM selector tool to help you choose the right VM for your needs and budget. The tool offers numerous options for different use cases.

While implementing virtualization is easier than managing multiple physical servers and complex IT architectures, it’s far from trivial.

You may still face management and operational complexities, performance overloads, and increased software licensing costs. Don’t worry, though. Here is how you can tackle these challenges.

Performance Overheads

CPU virtualization may reduce overall performance if the underlying processor isn’t particularly powerful and several software applications running on the virtual machines are CPU-bound.

Allocating insufficient computing resources to multiple VMs may also lead to performance issues.

We recommend using a solid processor with multiple cores and good clock speed and adequately creating and distributing resources among VMs to tackle these issues.

Complexity

Without appropriate skills and training, you may struggle with complexities, including:

• Lack of performance visibility across VM instances
• Security vulnerabilities
• Resource contention
• VM sprawl

Effective virtualization management is only possible if the individuals responsible invest time and effort to learn it.

While your vendor’s customer service team should help initially, you should read as many guides and tutorials as possible to increase your knowledge.

Licensing and Costs

Simply put, you can’t purchase a software license for one system (the host system) and expect to use it on multiple systems (virtual machines) without consequences — it may lead to compliance issues.

While most modern software applications can be used in virtual environments, there’s a limit to the number of systems they can run on, so ensure you purchase appropriate licenses.

Virtualization licensing compliance management is a must and may force you to reconsider your budget. While virtualization is cost-effective overall, you still need to be diligent.

Virtualization’s real-world applications include:

• Server consolidation and data center optimization
• Cloud computing
• Software development and testing
• Malware Investigation
• Disaster management
• Running applications with incompatible/legacy hardware

Additionally, many organizations seek solutions to facilitate permanent remote work, and the demand for virtual desktop solutions is surging.

Enterprise IT

Server consolidation is packing multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine. You can use its hardware resources more efficiently by consolidating multiple workloads onto a single machine.

This optimization is widely used in data centers and enables enterprises to attain higher performance and productivity levels from existing infrastructure. It also leads to more significant capital expenditure (CapEx) savings.

Cloud Computing

As you know, non-virtualized servers use only a portion of their resources at any given moment (15 to 25%), with excess resources remaining unused.

Virtualization maximizes server resource usage, and cloud service providers rely on it to maximize data center efficiency — it’s used across all cloud deployments.

For example, public cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud rely on virtualization to create cost-effective, scalable, and flexible infrastructure to host websites, applications, and services.

Alongside efficient resource utilization and easy scalability, virtualization allows end users to pay as they go, meaning they’ll only pay for the resources they consume.

Development and Testing

Since virtual machines are isolated environments, they’re ideal for software development and testing. Developers and QA teams can run tests on an isolated environment without affecting other VMs or the host system.

The snapshot feature is particularly beneficial, as it allows one to capture a particular system state and test different scenarios or roll back changes if necessary. VMs can also be replicated, which is useful for parallel testing and complex setup simulations.

Virtualization also has applications in compatibility and security testing. Earlier, we mentioned virtualization is used in malware investigations.

This is made possible by running potentially infected software in a controlled environment called a sandbox. You guessed it already: virtualization and containerization are popular sandboxing techniques.

Virtualization is not limited to servers — virtualization in networks, desktops, storage devices, and applications is well-documented. Virtual desktop and software-defined storage solutions, in particular, are on the rise.

Virtualization adoption increases business agility in 66% of reported cases, and trends such as data virtualization and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) support are worth exploring.

Trends and Innovations

The two most popular trends in virtualization are data virtualization and AI/ML. Data virtualization tools create virtual data layers to accelerate data integration, storage, and retrieval processes.

Companies employ a data-first strategy — these tools fuel analytics and help them make strategic and informed decisions.

The emergence of AI/ML is also beneficial, as it helps organizations automate and optimize numerous virtualization management processes.

Innovations such as edge computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) rely on virtualization to process data locally, reduce latency, and improve performance (virtualization is everywhere). The convergence of these technologies with AI/ML makes for a winning combination!

Impact of Virtualization on Emerging Technologies

Virtualization and AI/ML technologies have a symbiotic relationship. While AI/ML undoubtedly enhances virtualization management, virtualization supports these emerging technologies (and big data) by:

• Providing unified data access
• Breaking down data silos
• Reducing data integration times
• Enabling organizations to scale effortlessly.

AI/ML and big data have a crucial role in an ever-evolving IT infrastructure, and virtualization is at the heart of it.

Selecting the right virtualization solution is tricky — don’t go by the top Google Search result for “best virtualization platform.” It’s important to learn the basics of virtualization, including its types, workings, and benefits, and familiarize yourself with popular solutions before purchasing one.

It’s evident that setting up a virtual machine and running basic operations on it are simple. However, sophisticated operations require extensive knowledge, and managing multiple VM instances can be complicated.

Anyone can begin their virtualization journey by acquiring relevant knowledge and skills. Virtualization is used by all industry types, from data centers and development and testing to legacy operations.

Your enterprise IT architecture needs virtualization, so take the first steps toward purchasing a virtualization solution — it could be a game changer for you, as it’s likely to slash IT expenses, enhance resiliency, boost efficiency and productivity, benefit DevOps, and help you align with sustainability goals.

Virtualization makes IT more agile, so what are you waiting for?