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VIRTUALIZATION: A REVIEW AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Executive Overview

Article · May 2011

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 VIRTUALIZATION: A REVIEW AND FUTURE
DIRECTIONS
Executive Overview

This paper provides a thorough review of different types of virtualization

both at the technical and application levels. At the technical level, it
explains with the help of descriptive diagrams how virtualization
technologies work in general. It then goes on to make a distinction, again
with the help of self-explanatory diagrams and industry-available
products, among different types of virtualization technologies, i.e.,
emulated or full virtualization, paravirtualization, and hardware-based
virtualization. The paper then describes various applications of
virtualization in IS practice, such as, server virtualization, network
virtualization, storage virtualization, application virtualization, and
desktop virtualization. It then provides managers pros and cons of
virtualization. Finally, the paper provides some research directions.
 VIRTUALIZATION: A REVIEW AND FUTURE
DIRECTIONS
Park R. Young, Savannah State University,
Srinarayan Sharma, Oakland University

Abstract
Virtualization is seen as one of the green ITs which can help reduce
infrastructure and maintenance costs. It is regarded to be a cost-
effective way to dramatically reduce downtime, increase flexibility, use
hardware effectively, reduce overall system complexity, and lower
carbon emission. Though the popular business literature is replete with
anecdotal evidence of green benefits of virtualizing servers, storage,
operating systems, and in some cases entire IT infrastructure, there is
little academic research on this topic in the MIS area. In this paper we
provide a review of its principles, underlying technologies, major
applications, and costs and benefits. We also provide implications for
both practice and research, and identify some directions for future
research.

Keywords: Green IT; Virtualization; IT infrastructure; Information

Systems Architecture; Information Technology Management

INTRODUCTION

Virtualization is considered one of the hottest information technologies

(ITs) of today (Bellovin, 2006; Lewis, 2009; Pratt, 2007; Prigge, 2008). It
is seen as one of the green ITs which can help reduce infrastructure and
maintenance costs (Pratt 2007; Womack, 2008). It is regarded to be a cost-
effective way to dramatically reduce downtime, increase flexibility, use
hardware effectively, and reduce overall system complexity (Crosby &
Brown, 2007; Pratt, 2007; Prigge, 2008).

Gartner (2009a) has identified virtualization as one of the top three

strategic information technologies for 2010. It expects the server
virtualization software market to grow at a compound annual growth rate
of 28 percent during 2009-2013 from $1.8 billion to $6.2 billion (Gartner,
2009b). IDC’s prediction of worldwide sales of virtualization software at
AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

an average annual rate of 27% through 2011 is similar (Lai & Thibodeau,
2008). According to a recent CA (2008) survey of 300 IT executives,
eighty eight percent of the respondents’ companies in the United States are
using some form of virtualization, while the same is true of fifty-nine
percent of respondents’ in Europe and forty-six percent in the Asia Pacific
region. Many more companies are planning to invest in virtualization in
the near future (CA, 2008).

What is virtualization? How does it work? How does it help organizations

become greener in terms of their use of IT? Does it have any downside? Is
it another IT fad which will pass? Though the popular business literature is
replete with anecdotal evidence of green benefits of virtualizing servers,
storage, operating systems, and in some cases entire IT infrastructure,
there is little academic research on this topic in the MIS area. In this paper
we bring together disparate streams of literature from computer science,
vendors of virtualization products, and practitioner publications to provide
an understanding of the principles, technologies, applications, and costs
and benefits of virtualization. It is hoped that this review will benefit
practitioners in making informed decision before they embark on their
adoption and implementation journey. We also identify important research
issues which need to be addressed if IS community is to realize full
potential of virtualization.

This paper is organized as follows. First we define virtualization and then

we discuss how it works. Next we describe different types of virtualization
technologies. Then we describe most commonly used applications of
virtualization. Following this we discuss benefits and costs of
virtualization. Then we discuss implications of this research and identify
some directions for future research. Finally, we provide some concluding
remarks.

What is Virtualization?

Current virtualization technology owes its roots to virtualization in the

mainframe environment in 1960s because of the need to provide isolation
between users in time-sharing systems where multiple users shared a
single powerful system such as a mainframe computer (Crosby & Brown,
2007; Treese, 2005). While reducing the ecological footprint was not a
major concern of the organizations of that era, reducing capital expenses
was. Mainframe computers were prohibitively expensive then. As a matter
of fact only a few organizations could afford to have one. Sharing a

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

mainframe with multiple users (from hundreds to thousands) was an

expedient way to keep capital expenses down. The virtualization era was
formally marked by the release of IBM’s VM for the System/370 in 1972
(Crosby & Brown, 2007).

The current emergence of virtualization technology owes its debt to the IT

industry rather than the academe. While hardware cost was falling down
dramatically even when performance was improving exponentially, the
utilization of cheaper and faster x86 computers was becoming lower and
lower (by some estimates as low as 5%). At the same time, lower cost was
leading organizations to imprudently acquire more of the new x86
machines, leading to increased power consumption, use of physical space,
and overall more infrastructure complexity and maintenance cost.
Practitioners in the IT industry sought to address this problem head on,
which was initially led by VMware and later joined by others. In this
context, we start defining virtualization from industry perspective.

VMware (2007) depicts virtualization as the separation of a service

request from the underlying physical delivery of that service. Parallels
(2008b) describes virtualization technologies as abstracting virtual servers
from the underlying hardware, while Intel (2008b) considers virtualization
as the abstraction of the computer hardware, that is, hiding the physical
computer from the way in which it is used. Schott (2003) views
virtualization as a logical abstraction which hides the underlying resource
sharing and its clusters and presents a single or arbitrary point of
“contact/entry/services.” In general, virtualization refers to technologies
which provide a layer of abstraction of the physical characteristics of
computing resources between computer hardware systems and the
software systems running on them (please see Figure 1).

How Virtualization Works?

Virtualization is achieved by inserting a layer of system software, often

called the hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) between the
guest operating system and the underlying hardware (Crosby & Brown,
2007; VMware, 2007). In most common forms of virtualization such a
layer is created by software emulation of the underlying hardware
platform’s architecture (Crosby & Brown, 2007). A properly designed
hypervisor provides application programs an execution environment
identical to its host hardware, minimally degrades performance, and has
complete control of system resources (Popek & Goldberg, 1974).

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

Current hypervisors allow multiple operating systems instances to run

concurrently within virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical machine,
dynamically partitioning and sharing the available physical resources such
as CPU, storage, memory, and I/O devices. Please see Figure 1 1. A VM is
a self-contained operating environment consisting of guest operating
system and associated applications, but independent of host operating
system. It is a platform independent implementation of CPU that runs
compiled code. VMs are specifically written for particular operating
systems on which they will run.

FIGURE 1:
Virtualization Architecture (Adapted from VMware, 2007)

VM1 VM2 VM3

App App App App App App
Operating Operating Operating
System System System

Virtualization Layer
Host Hardware

CPU Memory NIC Disk

Virtualization can be done using either a hosted or hypervisor architecture.

In hosted architecture, virtualization layer is run as an application on top
of an operating system (VMware, 2007) (See Figure 2). In hypervisor
architecture virtualization is achieved by inserting a hypervisor or VMM
between the underlying hardware and VMs (Crosby & Brown, 2007) (See
Figure 1). Hypervisor has its own kernel and is directly installed on the
hardware (Waters, 2007). In other words in hypervisor architecture,
virtualization layer is installed on a bare-metal or a clean x86-based

1
VMware makes a distinction between hypervisor and VMM, though these two are used
interchangeably in general.

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

system. Hypervisor is responsible for running multiple operating systems

images and all associated applications or VMs to share the resources of a
single hardware server. It ensures that server resources are properly and
securely partitioned among different operating system images and their
applications, though each operating system believes that it has the control
of the entire resources of the physical server. In other words, the physical
resources of the underlying hardware platform is divided among different
VMs to guarantee that each get a portion of the CPU, memory, I/O, etc.
Moreover, the applications running in each VM are protected as if they
were installed on different physical machines (Mitchell, 2005). The
hypervisor manages all hardware components such as memory
management unit, input/output devices, direct memory access, et cetera,
and presents a virtualized abstraction of these resources to each guest
operating system (Crosby & Brown, 2007; VMware, 2007). The
hypervisor architecture delivers greater scalability, robustness, and
performance as it has direct access to the hardware resources and does not
have to go through an operating system, while a hosted architecture allows
broadest range of hardware configurations (VMware, 2007). At the time of
writing, VMware player, ACE workstation and Server used hosted
architecture, while ESX server and Xen used hypervisor architecture.

FIGURE 2: Hosted Architecture

VM1 VM2 VM3

App App App App App App
1 2 1 2 1 2
Other
Applications
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS

Hypervisor

Host OS
Host Hardware

CPU Memory NIC Disk

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

TYPES OF VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES

There are three primary technologies to achieve virtualization: emulated or

full virtualization, paravirtualization, and hardware supported (Crosby &
Brown, 2007; VMware, 2007). Below we describe them in more detail.

Emulated or Full Virtualization

Emulated or full virtualization involves a complete emulation of the

underlying hardware platform’s architecture in software, particularly the
hardware processor’s instruction set architecture (Crosby & Brown, 2007).
For x86 processors, this set of instructions relates to interrupt handling,
reading and writing to devices, and virtual memory. These are considered
privileged instructions and can only be executed by the operating system
of the underlying physical machine (Crosby & Brown, 2007; VMware,
2007). (The x86 architecture has four levels of privilege called ring 0, 1, 2,
and 3. Operating system must execute its privileged instruction in ring 0 as
it needs to have direct access to hardware; user applications typically run
in ring 3 (Barham, et al., 2003). (Please see Figure 3). Emulated or full
virtualization technology forces emulation of these privileged instructions
by executing all the codes within the abstracted software or a virtual
machine (VM), including the operating system being virtualized, as user
code in ring 1 (see Figure 4). The VMM or hypervisor handles the
exception produced by the attempt to execute privileged instruction,
running in ring 0, by operating systems in these VMs and performs the
desired action on behalf of the operating systems. A hypervisor provides
each virtual machine with all the services of a physical system, including a
virtual BIOS, virtual devices and virtualized memory management
(VMware, 2007). VMware Workstation, VMware Server (formerly GSX
Server), Sun VirtualBox, Parallels Server, Adeos, and Microsoft Virtual
Server are examples of emulated or full virtualization.

Under emulated or full virtualization, an unmodified operating system

binary and unmodified application binaries are executed. The guest OS is
unaware of being virtualized and does not require any modification though
it is fully abstracted and decoupled from the underlying hardware by the
virtualization layer (i.e., VMM or hypervisor). Hypervisor translates all
operating system instructions in real time to have the desired effect on the
virtual hardware, while user applications run unmodified. It is considered
the best of three techniques to provide isolation and security (VMware,
2007), though it has its downside. In full virtualization, one guest

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

operating system and its applications can consume all physical memory,
and resource consumption management and performance isolation is
difficult (Crosby & Brown, 2007). If the physical machine uses a CPU
which was designed with operating system virtualization in mind,
emulated virtualization works fine. For others, providing emulated or full
virtualization becomes problematic and creates “virtualization holes”
(Crosby & Brown, 2007). It also degrades overall performance when
dealing with update-intensive operations such as creating a new
application process (Barham, et al., 2003).

FIGURE 3: x86 Without Virtualization

(Adopted from VMware, 2007)

Ring 3 User Apps

Direct
Ring 2 Execution
of User
Ring 1 and
OS Requests
Ring 0 OS

Host Hardware

FIGURE 4: Full Virtualization in x86

(Adopted from VMware, 2007)

Ring 3 User Apps Direct

Execution
Ring 2 of User
Requests
Ring 1 Guest OS Binary
Translation
Ring 0 Hypervisor of OS
R equests
Host Hardware

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

Paravirtualization

In paravirtualization technology, a guest operating system and a

hypervisor work closely to achieve optimal performance in place of a
direct software emulation of the hardware architecture of the physical
machine as is the case in full virtualization. The kernels of both OS and
hypervisor must be modified, however, to accommodate this interaction
(Barham, et al., 2003; Waters, 2007) (see Figure 5). It involves
modification of OS kernel to replace nonvirtualizable instructions with
hypercalls that communicate directly with hypervisor (VMware, 2007).

FIGURE 5: Paravirtualization in x86 (Adopted from VMaware, 2007)

Ring 3 User Apps Direct

Execution
Ring 2 of User
Requests
Ring 1
Hypercalls to the
Paravirtualized
Virtualization
Ring 0 Layer replace
Guest OS
Non-virtualizable
Hypervisor
z OS Instructions

Host Hardware
z

But there is no modification of the applications associated with the guest

operating system(s) (Crosby & Brown, 2007). Hypervisors can be
designed so that it is tightly coupled with a particular operating or is
neutral to operating systems (VMware, 2008d).

Once paravirtualized or ported, hypervisor can perform rigorous allocation

of underlying hardware resources, thus ensuring proper performance
isolation and guarantees (Barham, et al., 2003; Crosby & Brown, 2007). It
provides more efficient processing and lower overhead which results in
better performance than full virtualization (Parralels, 2008b). For the
reasons stated above, paravirtualization can be done only for operating
systems where the original codes are available. As a consequence, it is
available mostly for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and OpenSolaris
operating systems as in XenSource’s Xen. VMware also supports
paravirtualization on its ESX server via a virtual machine interface (VMI).
Though effort is underway to paravirtualize window-based operating
system, in general paravirtualization cannot support unmodified operating

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

systems such Windows2000/XP/Vista, and provides poor compatibility

and portability (VMware, 2007). (Microsoft has indicated that a future
version of the Windows operating system may work with a Microsoft-
developed hypervisor.) On the other hand, while it is very difficult to
develop sophisticated binary translation support for full virtualization,
modification of a guest operating system for paravirtualization is
comparatively easy (Barham, et al., 2003; VMware, 2007).

Hardware-supported Virtualization Technology

In hardware-supported virtualization, privileged instructions are targeted

with a new CPU execution mode feature that allows the hypervisor to run
in a new root mode below the privileged ring 0 for the guest OS (VMware,
2007) (See Figure 6). The privileged and sensitive calls are automatically
trapped to the hypervisor or VMM, thus eliminating any need for either
binary translation or paravirtualization. Examples of hardware-supported
virtualization are Intel’s Virtualization technology (VT-x) and AMD’s
AMD-V. The guest OS state is stored in virtual machine control structures
in Intel VT-x and in virtual machine control blocks in AMD-V. Hardware-
supported virtualization technologies reduce or sometimes even eliminate
hypervisor’s workload for trapping and emulating instructions executed
within a guest operating system without hardware emulation or OS
modification (AMD, 2008; Intel, 2008a). Both AMD and Intel claim that
their technologies enable servers to reach higher levels of efficiency and
utilization by assisting virtualization software to run multiple operating
systems and applications on a single physical AMD- and Intel-processor
based server (AMD, 2008; Intel, 2008a). However, Adams & Agesen
(2006) report that first generation hardware-supported virtualization rarely
offers performance advantages over software virtualization such as full-
virtualization and paravirtualization, except in situations when
applications require a lot of system calls. Examples of hardware-assisted
virtualization products are VMware Workstation (for 64-bit guests only),
Xen 3.x (including derivatives like Virtual Iron), and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Table 1 below provides a comparison of the three virtualization

technologies as described above. Since paravirtualization requires
modification of both the guest OS kernel and hypervisor, they become
tightly linked and may hinder the corresponding VMs’ compatibility with
and portability to other hypervisors, though a paravirt-ops interface, has
been jointly developed by IBM, VMware, Red Hat, and XenSource so that

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

FIGURE 6:
Hardware Supported Virtualization in x86
(Adopted from VMware, 2007)

Ring 3 User Apps Direct

Execution
Non-Root Ring 2 of User
Requests
Mode
Privilege Ring 1
OS Requests
Levels
Trap to VMM
Ring 0 Guest OS Without Binary
Translation or
Root Mode Hypervisor Paravirtualization
Privilege Levels
Host Hardware
z

a paravirtualized OS may be able to run on any hypervisor that supports it.

(VMware, 2007). Current hardware assisted virtualization provides the
least flexibility in managing the frequency or the cost of hypervisor to
guest transitions because of its rigid programming mode, though it is
likely to be much amenable to software manipulations in future (Adams &
Agesen, 2006). Security is considered fairly good for all forms of
virtualization because of their ability to keep different VMs isolated from
each other. Using VMware ESX Server and Xen as exemplars of full
virtualization and paravirtualization, Barham, et al.(2003) report that
paravirtualization outperforms full-virtualization. Adams & Agesen
(2006) report that current hardware-supported virtualization mostly
underperforms full-virtualization and paravirtualization.

In summary, all forms of virtualization allow higher utilization of

computing resources by enabling many applications to run on the same
machine which can be executed by different users. From an environmental
perspective, it results in less power consumption, and fewer machines
being used, and hopefully, fewer machines produced, which will decrease
carbon emission upstream. After having discussed different virtualization
technologies, below we provide descriptions of the most commonly used
applications of virtualization.

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 AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

TABLE 1: A Comparison of Three Virtualization Technologies

Full virtualization Paravirtualization Hardware-
supported
Technique Hypervisor provides a Uses slightly Exits to root mode
fully emulated modified version of on privileged
machine in which an OS which allows instructions
OS can run access to hardware
resources as managed
by the hypervisor
Examples VMware Server, Xensource’s Xen, VMware
Sun’s VirtualBox, VMware Workstation,
Microsoft Virtual Microsoft Hyper-
Server, Parallels V, Xen 3.0, Virtual
Server Iron

Modification of Both OS and guest Modifies OS, but Both OS and guest
OS and guest applications guest applications applications
unmodified unmodified unmodified

Compatibility Excellent (VMware, Poor (VMware, Excellent

with Windows 2007) 2007) Not available compatibility
platform on Windows OSs
(VMware, 2007)

Portability Excellent (VMware, Poor (VMware, Good

2007) 2007)

Flexibility Highest High Low

Security Best (VMware, 2007) Very good Good

Difficulty of Very difficult Easy (VMware, Difficult

building the (VMware, 2007) 2007)
product

Performance Good, though high Best, providing both Fair, current

cost for update- real and virtual time performance lags
intensive operations allows a guest OS to full virtualization
such as a new better support time- and hence
application process sensitive tasks paravirtualization
(Barham, et al., 2003) (Barham, et al., 2003; (Adams, K. and
Parallels, 2008b) Agesen ; VMware,
2007)

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

APPLICATIONS OF VIRTUALIZATION

Currently, there are six major applications of virtualization: server

virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, application
virtualization, and desktop virtualization (Mann, 2008). According to
Research and Markets (2007) server virtualization, followed by network
virtualization, will have the single largest impact on budgets for IT
hardware and support by 2010. Below we describe these applications in
more detail.

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization allows running many operating systems along with

their associated applications directly on top of server hardware without a
host operating system (Microsoft, 2008c) as shown in Figure 7 below. It
makes possible for many applications to be placed on one hardware
platform, or smaller number of hardware platform. It hides the physical
nature of server resources, including the number and identity of individual
servers, processors, and operating systems, from the software running on
them (Waters, 2007). Though server virtualization software allows
applications to run side by side on the same physical server, they remain
completely isolated, both from one another and from the underlying
hardware. Applications within a VM see a dedicated operating system and
server. Underneath, however, a hypervisor or VM monitor allocates a
share of the physical server’s processor, memory, and I/O resources to
each VM (Mitchell, 2005).

Server virtualization is the most common application of virtualization and

primary driver of virtualization market (Waters, 2007).

In spite of significant reduction in hardware cost, most organizations’ IT

costs and complexity keep rising. According to one estimate each server
costs on average $10,000 per year and most server utilization is about 10
percent (Crosby & Brown, 2007). It can help reduce capital cost as well as
overall operating cost significantly. In fact 10 percent server utilization
suggests that server virtualization has a potential to achieve ten-time
savings in infrastructure cost through reductions in CPU count, switching,
communication, storage infrastructure, power consumption, and
management costs (Crosby & Brown, 2007), thus leading to significant
environmental benefits.

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

FIGURE 7: Architecture of Server Virtualization

VM1 VM2 VM3

App App App App App App
1 2 1 2 1 2

Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS

Hypervisor
Host Hardware

One particular implementation of server virtualization is called operating

system level virtualization. In this implementation of server virtualization,
many isolated partitions or virtual environments (VEs) are created on a
single physical server with a single operating system (see Figure 8). While
a virtual machine (VM) is an encapsulation of applications and associated
operating system, a VE does not have its own separate OS from other
VEs; rather all VEs on a single physical server share a single host
operating system. A VE has its own processes, users, files, administrator
access, system libraries, and any other resource it requires to be a
standalone server (Parallels, 2008a; Linux-Vserver, 2008). Each VE is
very small in size compared to a VM and has a link back to the host OS.
Dynamic resource allocation of CPU, memory, network, disk, and I/O
enables real-time changes. Because of comparatively very small size of
VEs and direct access to host hardware resources by the host OS, OS-level
server virtualization is thought to provide much better performance and
scalability than full-virtualization and paravirtualization implementation of
server virtualization (Foxwell & Rozenfeld, 2005; Parralels, 2008a,
2008b; Sun Microsystems, 2004). OpenVZ, Virtuozzo, Linux-VServer,
Solaris Zones and FreeBSD Jails are some of the examples of OS-level
server virtualization.

Network Virtualization

Realization of many benefits of virtualization requires high-performance

networking. In fact, the efficiency of network utilization directly impacts
the number of network servers that can be effectively consolidated on a
single physical machine (Rixner, 2008). Cisco (2008a) defines network

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

virtualization as giving multiple group access to the same physical

network while keeping them logically separate to the extent to make them
invisible to each other. This is accomplished by partitioning a single
physical network into multiple virtual networks, thus not only minimizing
capital and operational expenses and carbon emissions, but also providing
rapid scaling up capability of an organization to meet new business needs
by incrementally adding new partitions (Cisco, 2008b; Waters, 2007).
Please see Figure 9 below.

Network virtualization can also consolidate hardware and networking

software resources of many physical networks into a single virtual
infrastructure, and thus reduce capital and operational expenses and
carbon emissions (Cisco, 2008b, see Figure 10).

FIGURE 8: OS-level Server Virtualization (Adapted from Parallels,

2008a)

VE1 VE2 VE3

App 1 App 2 App 3

System System System

Other Software Software Software
Applications
System System System
Libraries Libraries Libraries

Virtualization Layer
Host OS
Host Hardware

Network virtualization enhances application performance by dynamically

maximizing network asset utilization while reducing operational
requirements (Lippis III, 2007). It can customize access for individuals
and groups. It can protect an organization's IT assets by automatically
granting users and groups access to the proper resources based on their
roles in the organization, and minimize security risks to the network by
limiting the access of individuals without current security software.
Network virtualization has potential to improve productivity, efficiency,

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

FIGURE 9: Network Virtualization: Partitioning (Adopted from

Cisco, 2008b)

Virtual Network Virtual Network Virtual Network

IT Department Accounting Acquired New Company

Si Si Si Si Si Si

Virtualization Layer

Si Si

Physical Network

FIGURE 10: Network Virtualization: Consolidation (Adopted from

Cisco, 2008b)

Si Si

Partner Network

Security Network

Communications Network

Wireless Network

Wired Network Virtual Network

and job satisfaction of network administrators by automating many of

network maintenance tasks (Cisco, 2008b; Waters, 2007). It also facilitates

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AJIT Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011

central management of files, images, programs, folders, and storage.

3COM Open Services Networking (OSN) and Cisco Service-Oriented
Network Architecture (SONA) products are examples of network
virtualization.

Storage Virtualization

The rapid growth of stored data has created a demand for storage systems
that can be expanded without shutting down systems or without regard to
the number of physical disks supporting the storage system (Treese, 2005).
Storage virtualization is ideally suited to meet this demand. Storage
virtualization combines physical storage from multiple network devices so
that they appear to be a single gigantic virtual storage device (Gruman,
2007; Waters, 2007). It creates an abstraction or virtualization layer
between storage clients or hosts and physical storage that hides the
idiosyncrasies of individual storage devices (Norall, 2007) (see Figure 11).
In another words, it abstracts logical storage from physical storage so they
can be shared among a number of servers and applications.

Using virtualization software, storage drives can be added or replaced, and

replications, backups, snapshots, and mirrors can be created without
incurring downtime. It increases productivity of IT professionals by
allowing them to centralize many storage-related maintenance activities
(Gruman 2007; Waters, 2007). The utilization of storage systems is
considered to be in the 20% to 30% range (Yoshida, 2008). Storage
virtualization increases the efficiency of storage allowing files to be
stored. Many software for storage virtualization allow for combining
drives from multiple vendors and thus helps companies reduce cost by
avoiding getting locked in to expensive, proprietary drives/hardware
(Gruman, 2007). Storage virtualization can also mask or hide storage
volumes from servers that are not authorized to access those volumes, thus
providing an additional level of security (Microsoft, 2008a). It facilitates a
scalable, flexible storage environment, resulting in better storage
utilization rates and far lower operating costs and environmental pollution
(VMware, 2008a). SANmelody and SANsymphony from DataCore and
Universal Volume Manager Hitachi Data Systems are examples of storage
virtualization products.

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Application Virtualization

An application depends on its operating system for a range of services,

such as memory allocation, device drivers, etc. However, when different
versions of the same application are run, it creates problems as resources
required for older versions such as drivers, DLL, etc, are overwritten by
those for newer versions. This creates problems when migrating from
older OS (such as Windows XP) to newer OS (such as Windows Vista)
where application compatibility is an issue. Application virtualization
solves this type of problem by creating application-specific copies of all
shared resources from the underlying OS on which they are executed and
encapsulating them with the applications and delivering the entire package
as a single executive file (Microsoft, 2008; VMware, 2008c). Please see
Figures 12 and 13. Virtualization in the application layer isolates software
programs from the hardware and the OS, essentially encapsulating them as
independent, movable objects that can be relocated without disturbing
other systems. It provides an application to the end-user without installing
the application on the end-user’s client or local system. Applications run
locally, using local resources (e.g., processor, memory, disk, printer, and
network card) (Microsoft, 2007b). One example of application
virtualization is virtual appliance which is an encapsulation of an
operating system and its applications in a virtual machine (Crosby &
Brown, 2007). In virtual appliance, instead of being optimized to
hardware, the OS is configured to run a particular application, then the OS
and the application are combined in a virtual file, ready to run in a VM
(Babcock, 2006).

Application virtualization enables more agile deployment of IT

applications, simplifies their management, and can solve application
conflicts (Citrix, 2008; Oglesby, 2008). By converting applications into
virtual services that are managed and hosted centrally but run on demand
locally, application virtualization reduces the complexity and IT labor
involved in deploying, updating, and managing applications (Microsoft,
2007a). Since applications no longer compete for shared resources of their
environment, testing of new applications for conflicts with existing
applications is greatly reduced. Application virtualization also allows the
applications to be upgraded or rolled back while they’re running
(VMware, 2008c). The new version executes the next time the application
is started. VMware and others are touting the application virtualization as
a better way to package software demonstrations, proof-of-purchase

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FIGURE 11: Architecture of Storage Virtualization

Storage Clients

Fiber
iSCSI
Channel

Pooled Storage

FIGURE 12:
Architecture of an Application Virtualization
(Adopted from Microsoft, 2007b)

Virtual Virtual Virtual

Application Application Application
1 2 3

R+W
R+W Read
-only

Data System Services Configurations

Host Operating System

Host Hardware

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projects and evaluations (Waters, 2007). According to some estimates, it

has potential to slash the maintenance portion of IT budgets by 20 percent
(Babcock, 2006).

Desktop Virtualization on x86 Platform

Desktop virtualization is relatively new compared to other applications of

virtualization. It involves providing end-user with a desktop environment
that allows access to any authorized application without regard to the
location of the application (Mann, 2008). There are two primary
architectures for desktop virtualization – client hosted and virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI)-enabled (Microsoft, 2008c). In client-hosted desktop
virtualization architecture, a separate OS environment is created at the
client’s end, allowing incompatible legacy applications to operate within
their native environment on top of client’s existing OS (Microsoft, 2008b).
In VDI architecture, desktop operating systems and applications are run in
virtual machines (VMs) on data center servers (Microsoft, 2008b; Sun
Microsystems, 2008; VMware, 2008b). See Figure 14 below. Desktop
operating systems inside virtual machines are also referred to as virtual
desktops (VMware, 2008b). Using a remote display protocol users connect
to these virtual desktops from their PCs or thin clients and get an
individualized rich desktop experience with full administrative control
over desktop and applications (Microsoft, 2008b; Sun Microsystems,
2008; VMware, 2008b) It enables consolidation of multiple desktop
workstations onto a single server, resulting into significant reduction in
overall power consumption, and allows a user to access his/her equivalent
desktop from any endpoint (Miller & Pegah, 2007).

The desktop virtualization using VDI enables the reach of business

continuity and disaster recovery to desktops (VMware, 2008b). It can
strengthen an enterprise’s IT security by eliminating the need to store data
on laptops or PCs and storing it on datacenter servers, reduce costs to
administer and maintain laptops or PCs, reduce power consumption by
replacing high power-consuming laptops and PCs with energy-efficient
thin clients, provide flexibility to an increasingly mobile and widespread
workforce, and provide centralized backups to guard against data loss or
corruption (Sun Microsystems, 2008). VDI enables central administration
of desktops from any location, scalable management allowing storing and
managing thousands of virtual desktops on hundreds of physical servers
from a single management console, streamlined provisioning allowing
new desktops in minutes instead of days or weeks, and desktop isolation

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providing each end user an isolated virtual desktop and help to eliminate
the availability and performance problems associated with shared
application technologies (Miller & Pegah, 2007; VMware, 2008b).
Unfortunately, because of end user licensing agreement clauses, for some
operating systems such as Mac OS X, there is no desktop virtualization
available (Miller & Pegah, 2007).

The virtualization market is dominated by VMware which provides many

virtualization products from server virtualization, to storage, network,
applications, desktop , and IT infrastructure virtualization using all three
virtualization technologies, that is, full virtualization, paravirtualization,
and hardware-assisted virtualization. The other top vendors in this industry
are Citrix, Novell, Microsoft, Oracle, Paralles, and Sun. Citrix provides
application, server, and desktop virtualization based on Xen platform, that
is, paravirtualization. Novell primarily uses paravirtualization technology
using Xen-based virtualization and focuses on server virtualization.
It also supports hardware assisted virtualization with AMD-V processors
(Novell, 2008). Microsoft provides server, storage, application, and
desktop virtualization using both full virtualization and hardware-assisted
virtualization. Sun uses both Xen-based paravirtualization and hardware-
assisted virtualization to provide server, storage, and desktop
virtualization. Parallels provides desktop and server virtualization using
both full virtualization and hardware assisted virtualization. IBM, EMC,
Hitachi Data Systems, and DataCore are major vendors of storage
virtualization, while Cisco and 3Com are major vendors of network
virtualization.

BENEFITS OF VIRTUALIZATION

As indicated in the preceding sections, there are many benefits of

virtualization. Virtualization has the promise to provide new business
capabilities such as user mobility, lower-cost and smaller scale
infrastructure, lower carbon emission, rapid provisioning, real-time
deployment of live resources, application testing, business continuity, and
streamlined backups and mirroring. It is touted to enable the creation of
global virtualized infrastructure, rapid shifting of business models,
scalability of business growth, smoother integration of mergers, and
acquisitions, and optimal use of precious resources such as physical space,
technology systems, and natural resources (Reilly, 2008). It is difficult to
enumerate all the benefits identified in the practitioner literature. Below an
attempt is made to classify these benefits in broad categories.

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FIGURE 13: Application Virtualization

(Adopted from Microsoft, 2007b)

Virtual
Application
Server

Locally Locally
Cached Cached
Applications Applications

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Disaster recovery along with business continuity is considered the number

one driver of virtualization (Babcock, 2006; Walsh, 2007; Waters, 2007).
Virtualization can help organizations recover from disasters faster and
easier through centralized delivery of applications, and eliminate time-
consuming and costly desktop rebuilds (Citrix, 2008b). Using virtual
machines, copies of a company’s software combinations – operating
system, applications, and databases – can be built and moved to off-site
computers in virtual machines in real-time (Babcock, 2006; Mitchell,

2005). It can provide business continuity during planned or unplanned

outages by transparently redirecting users to alternate sites when regularly
accessed sites are unavailable. It can help perform maintenance work with
virtually no impact on users. For instance, one of the key advantages of a
virtualized server is that a production VM can be migrated either to a
different physical server within the same data center or to a server in a
different data center while running without service interruption. This
capability helps to recover the system from a disaster or to maintain a high
availability (Metzler, 2010).

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FIGURE 14:
Desktop Virtualization Architecture (Adopted from Sun
Microsystems, 2008)

Desktop Clients
running remote display software

Application Application Application

Desktop OS Desktop OS Desktop OS

Virtual Desktop 1 Virtual Desktop 2 Virtual Desktop 3

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Servers Servers

Storage Network Storage

Business Agility

Virtualization helps create a flexible, dynamic environment and enhances

an organization’s business agility by abstracting software away from
hardware, thus decoupling processes and technology (Crosby & Brown,
2007; Dubie, 2007; Waters, 2007). It can be used to embed agility in the
business strategy by aligning IT strategy with business strategy, change
processes and business standards and thus gain competitive advantage to
create new vision for a company (Reilly, 2008). Companies that use
virtualization tools such as clustering, partitioning, workload balancing,
etc, are better positioned to respond to changing demands of their
respective clientele than their competitors (Waters, 2007). Using virtual
appliances, virtualization enables live relocation of business applications
from one server to another if need arises (Crosby & Brown, 2007).
Virtualization can provide remote office connectivity by enabling

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configuration, management and application access from one central

location, thus reducing the cost of provisioning. It also provides workforce
mobility by extending secure access to a company’s networked resources
beyond the traditional office environment (Citrix, 2008b).As virtualization
allows easier management of computing resources, it leaves more room to
focus on services an organization’s computing resources can provide.

Better Security

Virtualization is also touted as a solution to the computer security problem

as a separation primitive from the physical machines (Bellovin, 2006;
Paralles, 2008c). Server virtualization can improve security and reliability
by isolating multiple software stacks in their virtual environments (Collier,
Plassman, and Pegah, 2007). In case of relatively isolated services, that is,
services that do not require much interaction, virtualization provides a
better and simpler form of isolation than independent disconnected
separate machines. It ensures that server resources are properly and
securely partitioned among different operating system images and their
applications, i.e., virtual machines (VMs). The applications running in
each VM are protected as if they were installed on different physical
machines (Mitchell, 2005). From a security perspective, this is considered
a desirable characteristics of virtualization as existing operating systems
fail to provide protection against viruses, worms, and spyware (Crosby &
Brown, 2007). Another way to look at the security benefit of virtualization
is that an entire n-tier application can be implemented on a single high
performance virtual server with multiple VMs being designated to each
server function. In this case the vast majority of the inter-VM traffic stays
within the server and does not need to travel organization’s physical
network. This is in contrast to the traffic flow of a typical multi-tier
application in which each tier runs on a dedicated physical server, which
may be spread over the network and may increase the risk of eavesdrop
(Metzler, 2010)..

More Reliable, Less Costly, Smaller Infrastructure

Server utilization in data centers is on average very low, about 5-25%

(Babcock, 2006; Crosby & Brown, 2007; Parallels, 2008b). While low
utilization of hardware is costly, it becomes much costlier when
environmental and administrative cost of running and maintaining
hardware (such as updates and patches, installation, and provision) is
included. Virtualization allows organization to cut power, environmental

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pollution, and hardware cost by server consolidation, improved efficiency,

and increasing user density per server (VMware, 2008d; Parallels; 2008b;
Walsh, 2007; Waters, 2007). It also cuts the need for physical space
(Babcock, 2006). Virtualization also improves reliability by isolating
multiple software stacks in VMs (Collier et al., 2007; Vallee et al., 2008).
It has been found to improve durability and portability of industrial
applications (Ribiere, 2008). VMware claims to have customers with
production servers that have been running without downtime for over
three years (VMware, 2007).

Testing and Development

Testing software before release is a common practice for application

development teams. The availability of a good infrastructure is a major
determining factor in overall cost of software development projects.
Virtualization can significantly reduce capital expenses of testing
infrastructure (Seetharaman & Krishna Murthy, 2006). It provides quicker
test-environment provisioning, the end of "patch and pray", testing the
entire stack, and smoother change management (Dennis, 2008). It is
bringing days of expensive manual testing environments close to an end.
No wonder, testing and development organizations are considered to have
deployed virtualization technologies first because of their need to use
many different operating systems (Parallels, 2008b).

COSTS OF VIRTUALIZATION

Many touted benefits of virtualization makes it tempting to adopt it.

However, it is not without costs. Costs of virtualization can be broadly
classified in the following categories.

Overhead

Though, virtualization breaks the link between the hardware and the
common requirement that applications run on dedicated servers, adding a
virtualization layer adds processing overhead that can range from a few
percentage points into double digits (up to 15% by some estimates)
(Babcock, 2006; Mitchell, 2005). Virtualization can result into significant
administrative overhead as a simple virtual machine requires as much
configuration work as a separate physical machine does (Bellovin, 2006).
Careful attention needs to be paid to process configurations to ensure that
system administration does not become worse than it is in the non-virtual

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environment (Bellovin, 2006). Basic virtualization technology, such as

Microsoft’s Virtual Server and VMware’s original GSX server, duplicates
an operating system and application in each VM and relies on the virtual
OS to send instructions to the hardware. This OS replication makes VMs
heavy memory users. In the case of Windows it may add significant
licensing costs, too . However, most servers are significantly
underutilized, so consolidation benefits can be significant (Mitchell,
2005).

Migration Difficulties in Heterogeneous Computing Environment

Though quick and painless migration is touted one of the benefits of

virtualization, it can be problematic if the network of machines is
heterogeneous (Drepper, 2008). If a guest application and associated OS
are first executed on a machine with one set of features and then are
migrated to a machine with another set, the operating system kernel or
application might fail to continue running. Since all organizations have
machines of different ages and features in use, using the least common
denominator of the features may solve this problem, but may sacrifice a
good deal of performance. Another touted benefit of virtualization, that is,
keeping each VM separate from each other for security and isolation
purposes may create some performance issues. Hard drive and network
bandwidth and latency are hampered by virtualization (Drepper, 2008).
Using VMM to keep VM isolated also is costly in terms of CPU and
memory utilization (Parallels, 2008b). When the data caches of the
processor are not sufficient, the performance may drop from 17 percent to
38 percent (Drepper 2008).

Increased Complexity

Virtualization increases system management complexity and IT cost

(DMTF 2007). It creates new management and security challenges and
requires an overhaul of management strategies (Howell, 2007).
Virtualization management and security tools are still in early stages of
development and there is a lack of good integration of virtualization
management tools with existing management software. (McLaughlin,
2007; Walsh, 2007). Service orchestration, which responds to a user
request by bundling application requests together and associating physical
infrastructural needs, also needs to be managed. Virtualization
technologies still involve some manual processes in indentifying for
underperforming virtual machines and correlating with performance of

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physical servers. Alerts need to be managed and coordinated. Usually

network management tools and processes developed for non-virtual
environment don’t perform well in this environment. Since virtualization
allows reallocation and reprovisioning of the underlying physical
resources continuously, it increases variability of physical network
performance.

Security

Although all forms of virtualization products claim to provide better

security than non-virtualized environment, not all security vulnerabilities
associated with VMs have been identified (Vaughan-Nichols, 2008).
When updating a server’s OS, there are few patching tools that ensure that
each VM’s OS gets patched as well. Failure to harden VMs and manage
patches may provide hackers vulnerabilities which they can exploit
(Franko, 2008). Two virtualization security risks are intrahost threats and
hyperjacking. Intrahost threats involve a guest OS in a VM becoming
compromised and this compromised VM attacking other VMs on the same
physical server (Hernick, 2008). In hyperjacking a physical server is
compromised which leads attacker to get access to all VMs running on
that server (Hernick, 2008).

Vendor Support

Vendor for virtualization application can be problematic (Babcock, 2006;

Lai & Thibodeau, 2008). Since it may be difficult for customers of
application software to pinpoint a problem with the software to itself or
another vendor’s virtual machine platform, it can lead to blame game
among respective vendors. Vendors of application software may insist that
the problem be duplicated on a real physical server before they will
provide support. Most vendors don’t support their applications on other
vendors’ virtualization platform (Lai & Thibodeau, 2008). To address this
problem, virtualization, operating system and application vendors all will
need to come together and address the problem.

Virtual Sprawl

Ease of deploying virtualization, in particular virtual servers, can lead to

virtual sprawl (Crosman, 2008; Smith, 2008). Virtual sprawl refers to
virtual machines being installed all over an organization without any

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coherent plan, thus leading to the chaos which is difficult to manage. It

can adversely affect software licensing costs (Crosman, 2008; Hernick &
Garey, 2008). Since virtual machines can be moved around dynamically, it
becomes more complex to diagnose and fix problems in an improperly
managed virtual environment compared to a non-virtual environment.
Overvirtualizing a physical server can lead to some applications running in
some VMs not getting enough processor, storage, memory, and other
resources to run properly. Efforts are underway to develop management
tools which provide IT managers the ability to oversee and manage their
entire virtualized environments from a single management console (Dubie,
2008; Smith, 2008). IT organizations also need to come up with a well
defined process to order, install, and manage virtual machines as they have
done for physical machines (Crosman, 2008).

IMPLICATIONS

This paper provides an overview of virtualization, an emerging green IT.

It is based primarily on a consolidation of practitioner literature and a few
academic literatures as there are not many. Below we briefly discuss if
virtualization is a fad and provide implications for practice and research.

Is Virtualization a Fad?

An understanding of the principles of the virtualization suggests that

virtualization, though considered to be one of the latest IT bandwagons,
may provide some real tangible advantages in terms of consolidation and
efficient use of IT resources, thus leading to smaller carbon footprint for
organizations from Green IT perspective as well. To some extent
virtualization is not just saving the costs of servers but rather saving the
number of servers to manage and reducing the electricity usage and the
associated carbon footprint produced by them. An example is a global
high-tech company that recently implemented a new channel partner
management system. A consulting firm for the project first proposed to
buy 64 Windows physical servers to meet the multiple instance
requirements – production, production support, development, training,
testing, etc. - for the project. But after a long debate the company decided
to go with Solaris zoning technique which helped them to reduce the
number of servers drastically and saved about 1.2 millions dollars in
server costs and space alone.

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Implications for Practice

In addition to the benefits stated above, virtualization can also serve as

facilitator of quicker disaster recovery and improved business continuity.
It also provides organizations a new tool to implement their changing
business strategy in a more efficient way. At the same time, virtualization
is not all apple-pie. It has its costs. The primary focus in the literature has
been on the processing and management overhead. Little attention has
been paid to the cost of training and education of IT personnel.

For practitioners, who may have heard a good deal about virtualization in
various forums and may have thought of adopting it, this paper provides a
basic understanding of virtualization and its underlying principles. It also
provides an understanding of the different types of virtualization
technologies and their pros and cons. Furthermore it describes most
common applications of virtualization. The paper also makes practitioners
aware of not only the benefits of virtualization, but also the associated
costs, which are downplayed in most forums. It is hoped that this
awareness will help them focus their efforts in terms of their virtualization
needs for more detailed exploration and examination later.

Implications for Research

On the academic front, while technological aspects of virtualization

remain the domain of computer science, a lot needs to be done on the IS
side to gain a better understanding of virtualization, particularly on the
adoption and implementation fronts. What is missing from the current
virtualization literature is an objective look at the cost-benefit analysis of
virtualization. Though virtualization’s benefits have been touted widely in
the literature, these authors have has not come across a single empirical
study which has demonstrated it to be so. Most benefits of virtualization
are anecdotal in nature. Independent case studies of various applications of
virtualizations in different organizations will help understand this issue
better. Also there is no empirical evaluation of the comparable benefits of
the three virtualization technologies. An open third-party benchmarking
may be needed to compare the performance of these different
virtualization techniques. Though full and paravirtualization technologies
using Xen and VMware ESX Server have been compared (Barham, et al.,
2003), results for VMware ESX were not reported due to its restrictive
End User License Agreement. Licensing issues become complicated in
virtualized environment and may play a significant role in the overall cost-

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benefit analysis of virtualization (Miller & Pegah, 2007). A

comprehensive cost-benefit analysis should examine all aspects of
transitioning an organization’s IT infrastructure from a non-virtual to a
virtual environment, such as hardware costs, software costs, IT personnel
hiring and training, management complexity of transitioning,
environmental impact, etc. Optimization and economic modeling will
help. On the pure theoretical front, do established IS theories apply to the
adoption and implementation of virtualization? Do they differ from one
type of virtualization to another? Or is virtualization a different type of IT
from the ones examined in the IS literature (see Swanson, 1994)? What
are drivers and facilitators of virtualization? Again do they differ from one
type of virtualization to another?

CONCLUSIONS

Virtualization is a software emulation of a hardware platform’s

architecture, which is implemented using either a hosted or hypervisor
architecture. There are three primary virtualization technologies used
today, emulated or full virtualization, paravirtualization, and hardware
supported virtualization. Hardware supported virtualization is still in its
infancy, while emulated or full virtualization and paravirtualization are
comparatively mature technologies. It seems that the full-virtualization
software such as the one from VMware may be the most suitable for the
Windows-based operating systems as paravirtualization requires
modifications of both hypervisor and operating system, though
paravirtualization on whole is considered to be best of the three because of
its ease of implementation and better performance. Hardware assisted
virtualization is considered the future with processor paravirtualization a
performance enhancing stopgap along the way. Organizations use many
types of virtualization to leverage their existing IT infrastructure, though
the primary focus has been on server virtualization. After server
virtualization, usually they move on to network virtualization, storage
virtualization, OS virtualization, application virtualization, desktop
virtualization, and may decide to virtualize their IT infrastructure (Miller
& Pegah, 2007). General trend is moving towards applying virtualization
to almost all the components of an organization’s IT infrastructure (Miller
& Pegah, 2007).

Virtualization is seen as delivering on the promise of efficient hardware

utilization, better resource allocation, flexible application services, lower
costs, and greener IT. Though it has its downside such as danger of lower

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application performance, issues with security, less than desired vendor

support for virtualization, if managed correctly, virtualization can provide
IT managers with a powerful set of IT tools to revamp data centers and
harness the complexity that threatens to overwhelm them, and at the same
time reduce their respective organizations’ carbon footprint. It is seen to
dramatically change the way information systems are used by individuals
and organizations (Crosby & Brown, 2007). It is hoped that both
practitioners and academicians will gain some insight from this overview.

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About the Authors

Dr. Young Park is a visiting professor of CIS at Savannah State

University in Savannah, Georgia. Before he joined Savannah State
University, he worked as a consultant for a number of projects including
IBM, Motorola, HSN, etc. His research interests include service-oriented
architecture, enterprise architecture, project management, CRM, etc. He
published papers in IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IACIS
Referred Proceedings and others.

Dr. Srinarayan Sharma is an associate Professor of MIS in the School of

Business Administration at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
His past work has involved studies of various IT innovations such as
opensource software, computer-aided software engineering, data
warehousing, mobile commerce, etc. His current interest lies in the
application of IT to solve contemporary problems such as global warming,
water scarcity, and world poverty. His past work has been published in
various IT journals and conferences such as Communications of the ACM,
Information Systems Journal, Information & Management, Annual
Conferences of the Association of Information Systems, Annual
Conferences of the Decision Sciences Institutes, et cetera.

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