Читать книгу Mastering VMware vSphere 6 - Marshall Nick - Страница 7

Back in 2005 I was trying to convince my boss that we should use GSX Server on our shiny new DL385. To him, it was a hard sell. He didn’t understand why on earth we should install two operating systems onto a server – ”It’ll just slow it down!” he exclaimed in his Aussie accent. So I went ahead and started experimenting with VMware software on my desktop computer. Luckily at the time I had a workstation capable of running such things.

The times have changed quite a bit since then, and now virtualization – especially server virtualization – is readily embraced in corporate datacenters worldwide. VMware has gone from a relatively small vendor to one of the industry heavyweights, garnering a commanding share of the server virtualization market with its top-notch virtualization products. Even now, while other companies such as Microsoft, Red Hat, and Citrix have jumped into the server virtualization space, it’s still VMware that’s almost synonymous with virtualization. For all intents and purposes, VMware invented the market.

If you’re reading this, though, there’s a chance you’re just now starting to learn about virtualization. What is virtualization, and why is it important to you?

I define virtualization as the abstraction of one computing resource from another computing resource. Consider storage virtualization; in this case, you are abstracting servers (one computing resource) from the storage to which they are connected (another computing resource). This holds true for other forms of virtualization, too, like application virtualization (abstracting applications from the operating system). When most information technology professionals think of virtualization, they think of hardware (or server) virtualization: abstracting the operating system from the underlying hardware on which it runs and thus enabling multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical server. That is the technology on which VMware has built its market share.

Almost single-handedly, VMware’s enterprise-grade virtualization solution has revolutionized how organizations manage their datacenters. Before VMware introduced its powerful virtualization solution, organizations bought a new server every time a new application needed to be provisioned. Over time, datacenters became filled with servers that were all using only a fraction of their overall capacity. Even though these servers were underutilized, organizations still had to pay to power them and to dissipate the heat they generated.

Now, using VMware’s server virtualization products, organizations can run multiple operating systems and applications on their existing hardware, and new hardware is purchased only when capacity needs dictate. No longer must organizations purchase a new physical server whenever a new application needs to be deployed. By stacking workloads together using virtualization, organizations derive greater value from their hardware investments. They also reduce operational costs by reducing the number of physical servers and associated hardware in the datacenter, in turn decreasing power usage and cooling needs in the datacenter. In some cases these operational cost savings can be quite significant.

But consolidation is only one benefit of virtualization; companies also realize greater workload mobility, increased uptime, streamlined disaster-recovery options, and a bevy of other benefits from adopting virtualization. And virtualization, specifically server virtualization, has created the foundation for a new way of approaching the computing model: cloud computing.

Cloud computing is built on the tenets of broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, on-demand self-service, and measured service. Virtualization, such as that provided by VMware’s products, enables the IT industry to embrace this new operational model of more efficiently providing services to their customers, whether those customers are internal (their employees) or external (partners, end users, or consumers). That ability to efficiently provide services is the reason virtualization is important to you.

This book provides all the information you, as an information technology professional, need to design, deploy, configure, manage, and monitor a dynamic virtualized environment built on VMware’s enterprise-class server virtualization product, vSphere 6.0.