Virtual Machines - Vital Part of IT Industry

As we all are well aware, Information Technology is growing at rapid rate each and every day. Thus new technologies are getting introduced every now and then. IT Companies are always trying to invent something better than the currently available techniques. One such invention is VIRTUAL MACHINES !!!

Have you ever heard the concept of a computer running inside another computer?? This is what virtual machines offer you. 

You are basically running one or more virtual computers inside a physical computer. 

There are many advantages of virtual machines. The most notable advantages are,

• Saving time and money.  
• The person who is using a virtual machine / virtual computer does not come to know that he is actually using a virtual machine. He feels as if he is using a normal desktop.

Lets have a look at a simple example to understand how time and money can be saved using virtual machines. Suppose

• the organization has a requirement of buying 3 physical servers
• on an average, lets assume the cost of 1 server is 2 lacs INR (Indian Rupees)
• this means the organization will have to pay 6 lacs INR for server hardware
• for connectivity between the servers, its required to have networking setup along with security. We will assume this will add up the cost by 50,000 INR more.
• this means the total cost for the setup will be 6.5 lacs INR

Now  if the organization wants to reduce this cost, lets take an example of seting up Virtual Machines,

• The organization will buy a single server worth 3.5 lacs INR with high end configuration 
• install 3 virtual machines on this single server server 
• use the same network as that of the single physical server and implement bridge networking on these 3 virtual machines
• thats it. Here you go......

(Please note that the costing which I have considered here is approximate and considered just as an example for understanding the benifits of virtual machines. Actual prices may vary.)
  

Now what the organization has achieved,

• The person who is using a virtual machine / virtual computer does not come to know that he is actually using a virtual machine. He feels as if he is using a normal desktop.
• there is no requirement for buying the below hardware,

       1)  2 keyboards 

       2) 2 mouse

       3) 2 monitors

       4) 2 server class motherboards

       5) 2 graphics cards

       6) 2 hard disks

•  organization saved 3 lacs INR
• space wastage is avoided due to less hardware
• reduced time for server setup

Lets understand how to create a virtual machine in brief. For creating a virtual machine on a physical machine, specific software is required to be used. There many such softwares available which you can use. Few examples are as below,

• VMWare
• Oracle VirtualBox
• Microsoft VirtualPC
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Parallels
• Quemu 

For some softwares you need to pay while for some others, you can download for free. It depends upon vendor to vendor. The first 2 mentioned in the above list are very popular and large number of users use those. 

It is required to provide some inputs in order to create virtual machine. The software configures the virtual machine according to the inputs provided. Few of the inputs are as below,

• Hard Disk space required
• RAM to be allocated
• CD / DVD ROM-RW
• Number of LAN cards (virtual)
• which Operating System to be installed (you can install the same by using .iso image or CD/DVD of the operating system you wish to install)
• Bridge network or Natted network

 

View the below video to understand how to create a virtual machine. 

 

From the video, you will clearly come to know that the virtual machine uses the resources from the physical server only. But the thing is the resources are shared in effective manner for better utilization and creating multiple virtual machines. For example, if the server has 1 TB hard disk and you are allocating 200 GB for one virtual machine. This means 200GB from 1 TB hard disk will be utilized for virtual machine. In this way, the remaining hard disk can be shared for other virtual machines. This is applicable for other resources too.

In the IT industry, there is a large requirement of Virtual Machine Administrators. This is a separate job profile. There are teaching institutes available which teaches Virtual Machine Administration techniques which helps the student to get a very good job in IT sector. Some of the topics which are tought are as follows,

• creating a virtual machine
• installing single/multiple OS on one virtual machine
• virtual machine cloning
• virtual machine backups and recovery
• daily maintenance of virtual machines
• virtual machines - network administration and security