What is Cloud and Virtualization Concepts

What is Cloud and Virtualization Concepts

Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to accomplish more of the things you want to do but don't have time to do? You make choices every day about how you spend your time. The things you NEED to do, such as studying or chores may leave little time for the things you WANT to do, like playing games or hobbies. What if you could multiply yourself to do all of the activities you want and accomplish all the tasks you need to do at the same time? This is what virtualization does for technology.

Multiple versions of you... this isn't a reality for humans, but it's fun to imagine the possibilities!

Before beginning to understand how virtualization works and its benefits, you first have to understand the concept of efficiency. To be efficient means to get the optimum (maximum) benefit from the resources being consumed. For example, you may be familiar with the term "fuel-efficient" being used to describe cars. If you are selecting a vehicle to use for your daily commute from the choice of a large sport utility vehicle that gets 10 miles per gallon or a compact car that gets 45 miles per gallon, which would be the more efficient choice? The compact car would be the more efficient choice since it provides more miles of use per gallon of fuel (the resource being consumed).

Although technology has brought us very far, it is not always very efficient. If a large, expensive computer system is using only a fraction of its capabilities to complete small tasks, one at a time or sometimes sitting idle, it is not being used efficiently. Just as if you had a load of laundry to wash, it certainly would not be efficient to wash one piece of clothing at a time. To get the laundry done in a more efficient way, the solution would not be to purchase more washing machines (too costly and impractical) but to make more efficient use of the washing machine by washing multiple items at once. The same applies to compute, virtualization can be the answer to improving efficiency by enabling a computer to accomplish more than one task at a time.

A key benefit of virtualization is the ability to create multiple copies from an original device. If humans had the capability to be virtualized it would mean that you could create copies of yourself in a virtual environment and those copies would be able to function very much like yourself. The only difference is that they would only exist in the environment they were created in and not in the "real" tangible world. Obviously, this technology is not available for us humans right now but, due to virtualization technology, it is a reality for computers. We will explore how this is possible later in this course but for now, we will introduce you to the two crucial parts of a machine that are necessary to use virtualization: hardware and software.