Organizations are using virtualization to manage their cloud environment effectively. Here is a rundown of the different types and what each can offer.
We may be compensated by vendors who appear on this page through methods such as affiliate links or sponsored partnerships. This may influence how and where their products appear on our site, but vendors cannot pay to influence the content of our reviews. For more info, visit our Terms of Use page
In today’s enterprise IT infrastructure, virtualization has gone mainstream as businesses seek more productive and cost-effective ways of running their businesses. With cloud computing as one of the main drivers of digital transformation in recent years, the adoption of virtualization creates the enabling environment for both cloud providers and users to manage and distribute cloud services more effectively.
Virtualization makes it possible for operating systems, applications and data storage from software or hardware to be represented in virtual form. Given the number of businesses moving their resources to the cloud, it becomes increasingly expedient for cloud providers to utilize virtualization to configure their services according to the individual needs of their customers, making their services more scalable and flexible.
In cloud computing, virtualization allows cloud providers to create a virtual emulation of multiple products or services on one machine without impacting the system’s efficiency. Besides helping cloud providers reduce hardware resources and implement energy-saving computing techniques, virtualization allows cloud users to purchase computing resources according to their needs. This helps end-users to only subscribe to necessary computing resources as their workload expands.
There are a variety of types to consider, and knowing them would help ensure that you apply virtualization in your IT infrastructure at the right instances. With that said, let’s go through six types of virtualization.
Storage management is one area of cloud computing that has been improved in recent years through virtualization. Storage virtualization involves collecting and merging several physical storage units and rendering them as one storage cluster over a network.
This type often comes in handy for enterprises and individuals aiming to expand and scale their storage without investing in physical storage facilities. In addition, storage virtualization improves effective storage management by ensuring that multiple storage points can easily be accessed from a single repository.
Network virtualization is used to merge several networks into one, duplicate the resources of a network and run an interconnection between virtual machines.
Through network virtualization, virtual networks can be separated and deployed, with each having its unique configuration without affecting the other. For example, in creating a virtual network, you can share your bandwidths and assign them separately to different channels where they are most needed.
