1. Performance
Why is dealing with loss so important? Because it affects application performance and ultimately customer satisfaction. If the processing consumption of the virtualized infrastructure is high, only non-production-level or less important application services can be run. Depending on the product, the processing loss of virtualization solutions ranges from 1% to 60%. The running efficiency of virtualized applications varies greatly. Some can be close to the efficiency of running in the original physical environment, while others are so poor that users cannot accept them. The performance of different products with the same virtualization technology route also varies greatly, but generally speaking, virtualization hardware will cause large performance losses, but operating system virtualization performance losses are extremely low and can almost be ignored.
2. Management tools
Many users try virtualization because it can reduce hardware costs, because the hardware in these data centers is only 15% to 20% utilized. Although the cost of hardware and environment itself is considerable, the larger part of the management cost still comes from the management cost of the server. Therefore, management tools are even more important for the management of virtualized infrastructure. Only through good resource management and monitoring can we truly utilize virtual server resources effectively.
Each virtualization solution offers very different management tools. Some virtualization solutions have few management tools and are very limited in their use. Certain virtualization solutions offer great toolsets that are packaged with the product at a discounted price. But some tools are very expensive, often sold as optional product components.
3. Platform support
Virtualization technology abstracts virtual servers from the hardware underneath them, but that doesn't mean the virtual infrastructure can support any hardware. It is important to note that hardware virtualization and parallel virtualization must support all hardware of the computer from CPU chips to graphics cards. The operating system virtualization technology is built on the standard operating system, so it supports all hardware supported by the operating system, so the deployment process of operating system virtualization products is easier.
4. Migration
Virtualization technology abstracts virtual servers from hardware. The biggest benefit of this is that virtual servers can be migrated back and forth between different physical servers. Migration capabilities allow virtual servers to be cloned or moved from one physical server to another.
Many virtualization solutions have cloning or migration capabilities, but they vary considerably in software capabilities, limitations, and cost. High-end zero-downtime solutions have extremely high migration costs and require the support of SAN centralized storage devices. When migrating servers, users need to evaluate the importance of migration and determine how to migrate to better suit the enterprise's application environment.
5. Resource Management
Three different types of virtualization technologies use different approaches to server resource allocation. Hardware virtualization technology and parallel virtualization technology allocate virtualized hardware resources to different virtual servers. The two technologies differ in their flexibility in allocating and replacing hardware resources. In fact, these two technologies allocate virtual resources to virtual servers, which have many restrictions. For example, the CPU and memory resources that can be allocated are always limited.
Operating system virtualization is very flexible in resource management, allowing resources to be updated in real time without interrupting application services or virtual servers.
6. Isolation and security
Each virtualization technology handles isolation and security issues differently. The most basic component of a virtualization solution is partitioning. All virtual machines must be completely isolated so that processes, dynamic link libraries, and applications do not affect applications on other virtual servers on the same server.
Relative to ordinary servers, because virtualization technology changes access nodes and different components, it is unlikely to carry out conventional attacks on virtual servers. Like isolation, it is equally important for two virtual servers on the same physical server to be secure from each other.
7. Server Utilization
Improving server utilization can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of data center resources. The main cost factors to consider in a server consolidation project are data center storage, power and year-to-year hardware maintenance costs. When evaluating the resource utilization of different virtualization solutions, you need to consider the limit on the number of virtual servers that can run on a single physical server. Although all virtualization technologies have no limit on the number of virtual servers, in the past, they simply could not support more virtual servers due to excessive additional consumption.
Operating system virtualization technology does not limit the number of virtual servers on a physical server. The efficient architecture allows a single server to support more virtual servers if hardware conditions permit, which undoubtedly greatly improves the actual utilization of the server. , while maximizing the cost performance and return on investment of the server.
8. Deployment efficiency
In 2005, researchers at Ideas International were surprised to find that the biggest benefit of server virtualization was actually saving a lot of time in server provisioning. The server provisioning capabilities of each virtualization solution are different. Some solutions offer templates and pre-configured tools, or custom configurations ahead of time, reducing provisioning time. The activation time of different processing methods varies greatly from 30 seconds to 1 hour. Compared with independent servers, virtual servers drastically shorten the server startup time.
9. Anticipated virtualization deployment
The top three server virtualization deployment scenarios are: test and R&D, server consolidation and disaster recovery.
For testing and R&D projects, because developers need to use many different operating system environments, which makes the related costs difficult to estimate, a better option is hardware virtualization.
Server consolidation (involving existing applications or new applications) usually occurs in production servers supporting online applications and data. Two factors to consider are processing losses and server utilization. Among them, the best solution is operating system virtualization, because operating system virtualization has lower server losses and can significantly improve server utilization.
Disaster recovery solutions are a very common virtualized server deployment solution. Many organizations find that disaster recovery solutions that allow real-time access and provide redundant systems are prohibitively expensive. Because virtualized servers can be activated, restarted, and create critical servers within a limited time, virtualized servers have quickly become one of the cost-effective disaster recovery solutions with higher management performance in a short period of time.
10. Total cost of ownership
The final factor to consider is the total cost of ownership of each virtualization technology. Solutions with more features and management tools are naturally more expensive. Some vendors require payment for additional features and management tools, making it more difficult to compare the total cost of ownership of various virtualization technologies. When you consider the performance and functionality offered by the base product and then compare the total cost of ownership, users will be surprised to see the significant difference in value that various solutions can provide.