2.3 Why Virtualization: A List of Reasons
Following
are some representative reasons for and benefits of virtualization:
§ Virtual machines can be used to
consolidate the workloads of several under-utilized servers to fewer machines,
perhaps a single machine (server consolidation). Related are savings on
hardware, environmental costs, management, and administration of the server
infrastructure/
§ Virtual machines can be used to
provide secure, isolated sandboxes for running un trusted applications. You
could even create such an execution environment dynamically - on the fly - as
you download something from the Internet and run it. Virtualization is an important concept in building secure computing
platforms.
§ Virtual machines can be used to
create operating systems, or execution environments with resource limits, and
given the right schedulers, resource guarantees. Partitioning usually goes
hand-in-hand with quality of service in the creation of QoS-enabled operating systems.
§ Virtual machines can provide the
illusion of hardware, or hardware configuration that you do not have (such as
SCSI devices, multiple processors, ...) Virtualization can also be used to
simulate networks of independent computers.
§ Virtual machines can be used to
run multiple operating systems simultaneously: different versions, or even
entirely different systems, which can be on hot standby. Some such systems may
be hard or impossible to run on newer real hardware.
§ Virtual machines allow for
powerful debugging and performance monitoring. You can put such tools in the
virtual machine monitor, for example. Operating systems can be debugged without
losing productivity, or setting up more complicated debugging scenarios.
§ Virtual machines can isolate what
they run, so they provide fault and error containment. You can inject faults
proactively into software to study its subsequent behavior.
§ Virtual machines make software
easier to migrate, thus aiding application and system mobility.
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