Virtualization

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Terminology
Autonomic computing

The self-managing characteristics of distributed computing resources, adapting

Guest Machine

A virtual computer which is run by a host machine.

Host Machine

A physical computer on which virtualization takes place.

Hypervisor

A piece of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs

Link Aggregation

Various methods of combining (aggregating) multiple network connections in

NIC teaming

Another name for link aggregation.

Snapshot

The state of a system at a particular point in time.

Thin client

A computer or computer program which depends heavily on some other

Thrashing
 A computer's virtual memory subsystem is in a constant state of paging,
resulting in degraded system performance.

Virtual LAN (VLAN)

A single layer-2 network which is partitioned to create multiple distinct

Virtual Machine (VM)

A software implemented abstraction of the underlying hardware which is

Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

Another name for hypervisor.

Readings
 Virtualization is the simulation of a hardware platform, operating system, storage device,
or network resources using software.
 In hardware virtualization, the host machine is the actual machine on which the
virtualization takes place, and the guest machine is the virtual machine.
 The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a
hypervisor or virtual machine manager.
 Hyper-V is Microsoft's hypervisor, available in in two variants: a free stand-alone product
called Hyper-V Server, and an installable role in Windows Server 2008 and later as well as the
x64 edition of Windows 8 Pro.
 The Hyper-V role may be added to either full or server core installations.
 Hyper-V is a kernel mode (Ring 0) hypervisor rather than a user mode (Ring 3)
hypervisor, resulting in better virtual machine isolation and better performance.
 Hyper-V requires a minimum of 2 GB of RAM, but each virtual machine running on the
Hyper-V server requires its own memory.
 Hyper-V uses the VHD (.vhd) virtual hard disk file format, with Windows Server 2012 and
Windows 8 also supporting the newer .vhdx format.
 The VHD file format may contain what is found on physical hard disk drives, such as disk
partitions and file systems, which in turn can contain folders and files.
 VHD files have a maximum limit of 2 TB for the size of any dynamic or differencing VHD.
 Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 and later operating systems support creating,
mounting, and booting from VHD files.
 Virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels
that allows the operating system to use secondary storage as virtual memory address space
and move memory pages between physical memory and virtual storage as needed.
 A virtual network is a computer network that consists, at least in part, of virtual rather
than physical network links. The two most common forms of network virtualization are protocol-
based virtual networks such as VLANs, and virtual device networks such as those connecting
virtual machines inside a hypervisor.
 Physical-to-Virtual ("P2V") describes the process of decoupling and migrating a physical
server's operating system (OS), applications, and data from a physical server to a virtual
machine guest hosted on a virtualized platform.
 Microsoft provides the SysInternals disk2vhd utility for manually creating virtual images
of Windows computers, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) for automated
P2V capability.

Summary
 Virtualization is the simulation of a hardware platform, operating system, storage
device, or network resources using software.
 In hardware virtualization, the host machine is the actual machine on which the
virtualization takes place, and the guest machine is the virtual machine.
 The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is
called a hypervisor or virtual machine manager.
 Hyper-V is Microsoft's hypervisor, available in in two variants: a free stand-alone
product called Hyper-V Server, and an installable role in Windows Server 2008 and later
as well as the x64 edition of Windows 8 Pro.
 The Hyper-V role may be added to either full or server core installations.
 Hyper-V is a kernel mode (Ring 0) hypervisor rather than a user mode (Ring 3)
hypervisor, resulting in better virtual machine isolation and better performance.
 Hyper-V requires a minimum of 2 GB of RAM, but each virtual machine running
on the Hyper-V server requires its own memory.
 Hyper-V uses the VHD (.vhd) virtual hard disk file format, with Windows Server
2012 and Windows 8 also supporting the newer .vhdx format.
 The VHD file format may contain what is found on physical hard disk drives, such
as disk partitions and file systems, which in turn can contain folders and files.
 VHD files have a maximum limit of 2 TB for the size of any dynamic or
differencing VHD.
 Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 and later operating systems support creating,
mounting, and booting from VHD files.
 Virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking
kernels that allows the operating system to use secondary storage as virtual memory
address space and move memory pages between physical memory and virtual storage
as needed.
 A virtual network is a computer network that consists, at least in part, of virtual
rather than physical network links. The two most common forms of network virtualization
are protocol-based virtual networks such as VLANs, and virtual device networks such
as those connecting virtual machines inside a hypervisor.
 Physical-to-Virtual ("P2V") describes the process of decoupling and migrating a
physical server's operating system (OS), applications, and data from a physical server
to a virtual machine guest hosted on a virtualized platform.
 Microsoft provides the SysInternals disk2vhd utility for manually creating virtual
images of Windows computers, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)
for automated P2V capability.