case study on virtualization in cloud computing

Case study: City of Fairfield uses virtualization to more efficiently deliver crucial city services

Listen to the podcast . Find it on iTunes/iPod . Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

O ur next VMware case study interview focuses on the City of Fairfield , California, and how the IT organization there has leveraged virtualization and cloud -delivered applications to provide new levels of service in an increasingly efficient manner.

We’ll see how Fairfield, a mid-sized city of 110,000 in Northern California, has taken the do-more-with-less adage to its fullest, beginning interestingly with core and mission-critical city services applications.

This story comes as part of a special BriefingsDirect podcast series from the VMworld 2011 Conference . The series explores the latest in cloud computing and virtualization infrastructure developments.

Here to share more detail on how virtualization is making the public sector more responsive at lower costs is Eudora Sindicic , Senior IT Analyst Over Operations in Fairfield. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner , Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions . [Disclosure: VMware is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts .]

Here are some excerpts:

G ardner: Why virtualize mission-critical applications, things like police and fire support, first? S indicic: First of all, it’s always been challenging in disaster recovery and business continuity. Keeping those things in mind, our CAD / RMS systems for the police center and also our fire st affing system were high on the list for protecting. Those are Tier 1 applications that we want to be able to recover very quickly. We thought the best way to do that was to virtualize them and set us up for future business continuity and true failover and disaster recovery. So I put it to my CIO, and he okayed it. We went forward with VMware, because we saw they had the best, most robust, and mature applications to support us. Seeing that our back-end was SQL for those two systems, and seeing that we were just going to embark on a brand-new upgrading of our CAD/RMS system, this was a prime time to jump on the bandwagon and do it. Also, with our back-end storage being NetApp , and NetApp having such an intimate relationship with VMware, we decided to go with VMware. G ardner: So you were able to accomplish your virtualization and also gain that disaster recovery and business continuity benefit, but you pointed out the time was of the essence. How long did it take you?. We went live with our CAD/RMS system on May 10, and it has been very robust and running beautifully ever since. S indicic: Back in early fiscal year 2010, I started doing all the research. I probably did a good nine months of research before even bringing this option to my CIO. Once I brought the option up, I worked with my vendors, VMware and NetApp, to obtain best pricing for the solution that I wanted. I started implementation in October and completed the process in March. So it took some time. Then we went live with our CAD/RMS system on May 10, and it has been very robust and running beautifully ever since. G ardner: Tell me about your IT operations. S indicic: I have our finance system, an Oracle -based system, which consists of an Oracle database server and Apache applications server, and another reporting server that runs on a different platform. Those will all be virtual OSs sitting in one of my two clusters. For the police systems, I have a separate cluster just for police and fire. Then, in the regular day-to-day business, like finance and other applications that the city uses, I have a campus cluster to keep those things separated and to also relieve any downtime of maintenance. So everything doesn’t have to be affected if I'm moving virtual servers among systems and patching and doing updates. Other applications W e’re also going to be virtualizing several other applications, such as a citizen complaint application called Coplogic . We're going to be putting that in as well into the PD cluster. The version of VMware that we’re using is 4.1, we’re using ESXi server. On the PD cluster, I have two ESXi servers and on my campus, I have three. I'm using vSphere 4 , and it’s been really wonderful having a good handle on that control. Also, within my vSphere, v Center server , I've installed a bunch of NetApp storage control solutions that allow me to have centralized control over one level snapshotting and replication. So I can control it all from there. Then vSphere gives me that beautiful centralized view of all my VMs and resources being consumed. It’s been really wonderful to be able to have that level of view into my infrastructure, whereas when the things were distributed, I hadn’t had that view that I needed. I’d have to connect one by one to each one of my systems to get that level. Also, there are some things that we’ve learned during this whole thing. I went from two VLANs to four VLANs. When looking at your traffic and the type of traffic that’s going to traverse the VLANs, you want segregate that out big time and you’ll see a huge increase in your performance. We’re going to save in power. Power consumption, I'm projecting, will slowly go down over time as we add to our VM environment. The other thing is making sure that you have the correct type of drives in your storage. I knew that right off the bat that IOPS was going to be an issue and then, of course, connectivity. We’re using Brocade switches to connect to the backend fiber channel drives for the server VMs, and for lower-end storage, we’re using iSCSI . G ardner: And how has the virtualization efforts within all of that worked out? S indicic: It’s been wonderful. We’ve had wonderful disaster recovery capabilities. We have snapshotting abilities. I'm snapshotting the primary database server and application server , which allows for snapshots up to three weeks in primary storage and six months on secondary storage, which is really nice, and it has served us well. We already had a fire drill, where one report was accidentally deleted out of a database due to someone doing something -- and I'll leave it at that. Within 10 minutes, I was able to bring up the snapshot of the records management system of that database. The user was able to go into the test database, retrieve his document, and then he was able to print it. I was able to export that document and then re-import it into the production system. So there was no downtime. It literally took 10 minutes, and everybody was happy. ... We are seeing cost benefits now. I don’t have all the metrics, but we’ve spun up six additional VMs. If you figure out the cost of the Dells , because we are a Dell shop, it would cost anywhere between $5,000 and $11,000 per server. On top of that, you're talking about the cost of the Microsoft Software Assurance for that operating system. That has saved a lot of money right there in some of the projects that we’re currently embarking on, and for the future. We have several more systems that I know are going to be coming online and we're going to save in cost. We’re going to save in power. Power consumption, I'm projecting, will slowly go down over time as we add to our VM environment. As it grows and it becomes more robust, and it will, I'm looking forward to a large cost savings over a 5- to 10-year period. Better insight G ardner: Was there anything that surprised you that you didn’t expect, when you moved from the physical to the virtualized environment? S indicic: I was pleasantly surprised with the depth of reporting that I could physically see, the graph, the actual metrics, as we were ongoing. As our CAD system came online into production, I could actually see utilization go up and to what level. I was also pleasantly surprised to be able to see to see when the backups would occur, how it would affect the system and the users that were on it. Because of that, we were able to time them so that would be the least-used hours and what those hours were. I could actually tell in the system when it was the least used. It was real time and it was just really wonderful to be able to easily do that, without having to manually create all the different tracking ends that you have to do within Microsoft Monitor or anything like that. I could do that completely independently of the OS. We're going to have some compliance issues, and it’s mostly around encryption and data control, which I really don’t foresee being a problem with VMware. G ardner: We're hearing a lot here at VMworld about desktop virtualization as well. I don’t know whether you’ve looked at that, but it seems like you've set yourself up for moving in that direction. Any thoughts about mobile or virtualized desktops as a future direction for you? On the horizon S indicic: I see that most definitely on the horizon. Right now, the only thing that's hindering us is cost and storage. But as storage goes down, and as more robust technologies come out around storage, such as solid state , and as the price comes down on that, I foresee that something definitely coming into our environment. Even here at the conference I'm taking a bunch of VDI and VMware View sessions, and I'm looking forward to hopefully starting a new project with virtualizing at the desktop level. This will give us much more granular control over not only what’s on the user’s desktop, but patch management and malware and virus protection, instead of at the PC level doing it the host level, which would be wonderful. It would give us really great control and hopefully decreased cost. We’d be using a different product than probably what we’re using right now. If you're actually using virus protection at the host level, you’re going to get a lot of bang for your buck and you won't have any impact on the PC-over-IP . That’s probably the way we we'll go, with PC-over-IP. Right now, storage, VLANing all that has to happen, before we can even embark on something like that. So there's still a lot of research on my part going on, as well as finding a way to mitigate costs, maybe trade-in, something to gain something else. There are things that you can do to help make something like this happen. I'm trying to implement infrastructure that grows smarter, so we don’t have to work harder, but work smarter, so that we can do a lot more with less. ... In city government, our IT infrastructure continues to grow as people are laid off and departments want to automate more and more processes, which is the right way to go. The IT staff remains the same, but the infrastructure, the data, and the support continues to grow. So I'm trying to implement infrastructure that grows smarter, so we don’t have to work harder, but work smarter , so that we can do a lot more with less. VMware sure does allow that with centralized control in management, with being able to dynamically update virtual desktops, virtual servers, and the patch management and automation of that. You can take it to whatever level of automation you want or a little in between, so that you can do a little bit of check and balances with your own eyes, before the system goes off and does something itself. Also, with the high availability and fault tolerance that VMware allows, it's been invaluable. If one of my systems goes down, my VMs automatically will be migrated over, which is a wonderful thing. We’re looking to implement as much virtualization as we can as budget will allow.

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• VMware's Carl Eschenbach on the Scope and Depth of Cloud Computing and How CIOs Will Have to Adapt
• VMworld Showcase: How ADP Dealer Services benefits from VMware View in its expanding use of desktop virtualization
• VMworld Case Study: City of Pittsburgh's IT success and the beneficial synergy between virtualized servers and desktops
• From VMworld, Cosmetics Giant Revlon Harnesses the Power of Private Cloud to Produce Impressive Savings and Cost Avoidance

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Virtualization in Cloud Computing: Here’s Everything You Need to Know

• Written by Karin Kelley
• Updated on June 28, 2023

By now, we’re all well acquainted with the word “virtual.” It has been used to describe everything from online banking to remote classwork to interpersonal communication. Technology applications aside, the word itself means “almost, or not quite.” When a task is virtually complete, it’s not quite done yet. Virtual reality doesn’t quite measure up to the real thing.

But in the world of information technology, it represents a new reality when it comes to leveraging and accessing computing power. Virtualization in cloud computing hasn’t just almost, or not quite, accomplished a paradigm shift in the way we utilize our technology resources—it has set the current standard. In fact, cloud computing would be impossible to deliver without virtualization.

So, let’s dig into virtualization and cloud computing, what it enables, and how you can become a cloud computing professional .

What Is Virtualization?

Virtualization, boiled down, is the process of making physical resources more widely accessible to both end users and programs.

In the early days of computing, if you needed a specific computing task accomplished, you had to find the machine that was capable of that task, sit down in front of it, log in, and run your one process—all the while hoping the machine didn’t freeze up because you asked too much of it. That computer was also the only place the data for your work lived. If you couldn’t get to the machine, or if it crashed mid-process, you were in trouble.

These days, the idea of needing access to an actual desktop machine to accomplish each of the myriad tasks we rely on technology for seems ludicrous and untenable. We don’t have to go to the bank to do our banking. We don’t have to be in a classroom to take a class. We’re less worried about losing data if a crash occurs. The main reason for that is virtualization and more specifically, virtualization in cloud computing.

Also Read: What is Cloud Computing? What You Need to Know to Get Started

Virtualization: Key Words

We’ve seen that the computing version of the word “virtual” takes on a slightly different flavor than the standard use of the word, so let’s clarify some other key terms and define them specifically for the concept of virtualization in cloud computing:

• Virtualization: Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual version of something, such as a virtual machine that emulates a physical computer.
• Virtual machine (VM): A VM is a software emulation of a physical computer that can run its own operating system and applications.
• Hypervisor: Also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM), a hypervisor is a software layer that allows multiple VMs to run on a physical host. It abstracts the underlying hardware and allocates resources to VMs.
• Abstraction: Virtualization allows for the creation of an abstraction layer between the hardware and software layers. This enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine.
• Host machine: The host machine is the physical computer that runs the hypervisor and hosts the VMs.
• Guest machine: A guest machine is a VM running on a host machine.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): VDI is a desktop virtualization technology that allows multiple users to access a shared desktop environment from different devices.
• Virtual network: A virtual network is a software-defined network that connects virtual machines together and to the physical network.
• Containerization: Containerization is a lightweight form of virtualization that allows multiple isolated environments to run on a single host machine, sharing the same operating system.
• Snapshot: A snapshot is a saved state or backup of a VM that can be used to restore the VM to a previous state.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing

So how does virtualization fit in with cloud computing? Essentially, virtualization makes cloud computing possible. While some are nervous about sending their data to the mysterious “cloud,” wondering where in the ether our private information has been beamed to, many of us now understand that our data resides on a physical server somewhere. Accessing our data from a handheld device or a laptop computer requires some element of virtualization.

There are three main services models used by providers of cloud services:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Host servers (physical machines) owned and run by a third party; computing and storage services rented out by other companies (for example, Netflix uses Amazon Cloud Services for IaaS); must be managed by the user.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): A cloud services company provides a platform for other companies to create and deploy their own applications. The cloud services provider manages infrastructure, the user only manages the applications installed on the machines.
• Software as a Service (SaaS): Infrastructure and applications managed by the provider; the user is “renting” the use of an application.

In all three models, virtualization is used to make the required resources available to the customer without having to actually own the resources. These resources are delivered over the internet, allowing users to scale their computing capacity and capabilities up or down on demand. In other words, people only have to pay for the resources they actually need. Gone are the days when individual users or businesses had to maintain expensive hardware that they maybe used a fraction of the computing power on. Leveraging virtualization in cloud computing allows us to get the most out of our technology budget, and qualified cloud professionals are the ones who can help achieve budget goals.

Also Read: Azure Active Directory: The Key to Managing and Securing Your Azure Cloud Environment

Types of Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Virtualization in cloud computing is achieved by combining multiple layers of virtualization. These layers include hardware/physical, network, storage, desktop, and application virtualization. The use of these layers is dependent on the model of cloud computing required for business:

• Server virtualization allows multiple virtual servers to run on a single physical server, allowing greater utilization of resources and flexibility in managing workloads.
• Network virtualization enables the creation of virtual networks that operate on top of physical network infrastructure, allowing for better management and allocation of network resources.
• Storage virtualization allows multiple physical storage devices to be presented as a single logical storage device, simplifying management and increasing flexibility.
• Desktop virtualization enables the creation of virtual desktops that can be accessed from any device, allowing for more flexible remote work arrangements and simplifying desktop management.
• Application virtualization allows applications to be encapsulated in a virtual environment, reducing conflicts and simplifying management.

Features of Virtualization

There is a multitude of features specific to a virtualized environment that allow you to take full advantage of its capabilities. Some of these include:

• Partitioning: Virtualization allows for the partitioning of a physical server or storage device into multiple virtual machines or virtual storage units. Each virtual machine or storage unit appears as a separate and independent entity.
• Isolation: Virtualization provides isolation between virtual machines, meaning that each virtual machine operates independently of other virtual machines running on the same physical server. A crash on one VM won’t necessarily impact another, even when they have the same host.
• Encapsulation: Virtualization encapsulates the virtual machine or storage unit and its associated software, settings, and data into a single file or set of files. This makes it easy to move virtual machines or storage units between physical servers.
• Resource allocation: Virtualization allows for the allocation of resources such as CPU, memory, and storage to each virtual machine. This enables the efficient use of hardware resources.
• Flexibility: Virtualization provides flexibility in managing IT infrastructure. It allows for the creation of virtual machines and storage units on demand, making it easy to scale up or down as needed.
• Disaster recovery: Virtualization makes disaster recovery easier by enabling the creation of virtual machine backups or snapshots that can be restored quickly and easily.

Benefits of Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Even if the concept of virtualization is relatively new to us, we’re likely already familiar with at least some of the benefits of virtualization in cloud computing, like:

• Ease of access. We can get to our applications and data from anywhere with a network connection.
• Cost-effective. Physical hardware costs can be prohibitive, but with virtualization and cloud computing, we can effectively “rent” only the resources we need to accomplish our end goal, whether it’s accessing a bank statement from an application on our phone or managing a data warehouse for health insurance claims information.
• Security. Instead of providing access to the main systems, virtual systems with their own security measures can be created that only provide access to the information needed for the job. These security levels can be maintained independently of the overall hardware security, keeping access to the main servers restricted to the system administrators.
• Redundancy. Data can be backed up and archived in several places easily, reducing the overhead of maintaining a large, single repository of data and providing secure backups and restore points in the case of an outage or data corruption.
• Agility. Because users aren’t beholden to the limitations of their own hardware/software, they can quickly pivot to take advantage of changing technology and markets.

Also Read: How to Become a Cloud Engineer? A Complete Guide

What to Know About Managing Virtual Systems

If you’re the one providing the virtualized resources, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure the performance, availability, and security of virtualized environments:

• Monitoring and performance management: Monitor the performance of your virtualized systems and applications to identify potential bottlenecks or issues. Use monitoring tools to track resource utilization, such as CPU, memory, and disk usage, and keep an eye on application performance metrics.
• Capacity planning: Ensure your virtualized systems have enough resources to meet the needs of your applications. Plan for future growth and allocate resources accordingly.
• Backup and recovery: Implement a backup and recovery plan for your virtualized systems to ensure that data and applications can be restored quickly in the event of a disaster or outage.
• Security: Protect your virtualized systems and applications from cyber threats by implementing security measures such as firewalls, antivirus software, and access controls.
• Patching and updates: Keep your virtualized systems up to date with the latest patches and updates to ensure that known security vulnerabilities are addressed.
• Resource management: Manage the allocation and use of resources, such as storage and network bandwidth, to ensure that applications have the resources they need to run smoothly.
• Documentation and reporting: Document all changes and updates to your virtualized systems and applications, and generate regular reports to ensure everything is running as expected.

While it may seem like a lot to keep track of, bear in mind that many of these tasks can be handled by the company providing the cloud services, depending on the model of cloud services we’re engaging them for—and the companies that provide these services often have dedicated, resourceful teams more than up to the task of managing each of these critical components of a virtualized configuration.

Ready to Kickstart Your Career in the Clouds?

Virtualization in cloud computing offers many benefits and is so commonplace now that, as consumers, we’re probably not even aware that it’s in play. And that’s the goal—providing seamless service with minimal interruption in a safe environment. Creating and maintaining an effectively virtualized environment of physical hardware is what enabled cloud computing at scale possible, after all.

If you are looking to start or boost your career in cloud computing, taking an online cloud computing course is an excellent option. This comprehensive bootcamp will help you master all aspects of cloud architecture on two of the top cloud platforms—AWS and Azure—in just six months. The applied learning method provided will teach you everything you need to know to become a cloud professional through live online classes led by top experts, hands-on projects in integrated labs, and industry-relevant Capstone projects in four domains to demonstrate your new skills to prospective employers.

Check out this acclaimed program and take your career to the next level!

You might also like to read:

Cloud Computing Technology: Your Complete Guide

All About IaaS: A Comprehensive Guide

What Are the Different Types of Cloud Computing? A Comprehensive Guide

Cloud Computing Salary: Guide, Trends, and Predictions

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Virtualization is a technique of how to separate a service from the underlying physical delivery of that service. It is the process of creating a virtual version of something like computer hardware. It was initially developed during the mainframe era. It involves using specialized software to create a virtual or software-created version of a computing resource rather than the actual version of the same resource. With the help of Virtualization, multiple operating systems and applications can run on the same machine and its same hardware at the same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware. 

In other words, one of the main cost-effective, hardware-reducing, and energy-saving techniques used by cloud providers is Virtualization. Virtualization allows sharing of a single physical instance of a resource or an application among multiple customers and organizations at one time. It does this by assigning a logical name to physical storage and providing a pointer to that physical resource on demand. The term virtualization is often synonymous with hardware virtualization, which plays a fundamental role in efficiently delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions for cloud computing . Moreover, virtualization technologies provide a virtual environment for not only executing applications but also for storage, memory, and networking.

Virtualization

• Host Machine: The machine on which the virtual machine is going to be built is known as Host Machine.
• Guest Machine: The virtual machine is referred to as a Guest Machine.

Work of Virtualization in Cloud Computing 

Virtualization has a prominent impact on Cloud Computing. In the case of cloud computing, users store data in the cloud, but with the help of Virtualization, users have the extra benefit of sharing the infrastructure. Cloud Vendors take care of the required physical resources, but these cloud providers charge a huge amount for these services which impacts every user or organization. Virtualization helps Users or Organisations in maintaining those services which are required by a company through external (third-party) people, which helps in reducing costs to the company. This is the way through which Virtualization works in Cloud Computing. 

Benefits of Virtualization

• More flexible and efficient allocation of resources. 
• Enhance development productivity. 
• It lowers the cost of IT infrastructure. 
• Remote access and rapid scalability. 
• High availability and disaster recovery. 
• Pay peruse of the IT infrastructure on demand. 
• Enables running multiple operating systems.

Drawback of Virtualization

• High Initial Investment: Clouds have a very high initial investment, but it is also true that it will help in reducing the cost of companies.
• Learning New Infrastructure: As the companies shifted from Servers to Cloud, it requires highly skilled staff who have skills to work with the cloud easily, and for this, you have to hire new staff or provide training to current staff.
• Risk of Data: Hosting data on third-party resources can lead to putting the data at risk, it has the chance of getting attacked by any hacker or cracker very easily.

For more benefits and drawbacks, you can refer to the Pros and Cons of Virtualization.

Characteristics of Virtualization

• Increased Security: The ability to control the execution of a guest program in a completely transparent manner opens new possibilities for delivering a secure, controlled execution environment. All the operations of the guest programs are generally performed against the virtual machine, which then translates and applies them to the host programs. 
• Managed Execution: In particular, sharing, aggregation, emulation, and isolation are the most relevant features.
• Sharing: Virtualization allows the creation of a separate computing environment within the same host.
• Aggregation: It is possible to share physical resources among several guests, but virtualization also allows aggregation, which is the opposite process.

For more characteristics, you can refer to Characteristics of Virtualization .

Types of Virtualization

• Application Virtualization

Network Virtualization

• Desktop Virtualization
• Storage Virtualization
• Data virtualization

1. Application Virtualization:  Application virtualization helps a user to have remote access to an application from a server. The server stores all personal information and other characteristics of the application but can still run on a local workstation through the internet. An example of this would be a user who needs to run two different versions of the same software. Technologies that use application virtualization are hosted applications and packaged applications. 

2. Network Virtualization:  The ability to run multiple virtual networks with each having a separate control and data plan. It co-exists together on top of one physical network. It can be managed by individual parties that are potentially confidential to each other. Network virtualization provides a facility to create and provision virtual networks, logical switches, routers, firewalls , load balancers, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) , and workload security within days or even weeks. 

3. Desktop Virtualization: Desktop virtualization allows the users’ OS to be remotely stored on a server in the data center. It allows the user to access their desktop virtually, from any location by a different machine. Users who want specific operating systems other than Windows Server will need to have a virtual desktop. The main benefits of desktop virtualization are user mobility, portability, and easy management of software installation, updates, and patches. 

4. Storage Virtualization:  Storage virtualization is an array of servers that are managed by a virtual storage system. The servers aren’t aware of exactly where their data is stored and instead function more like worker bees in a hive. It makes managing storage from multiple sources be managed and utilized as a single repository. storage virtualization software maintains smooth operations, consistent performance, and a continuous suite of advanced functions despite changes, breaks down, and differences in the underlying equipment. 

5. Server Virtualization:  This is a kind of virtualization in which the masking of server resources takes place. Here, the central server (physical server) is divided into multiple different virtual servers by changing the identity number, and processors. So, each system can operate its operating systems in an isolated manner. Where each sub-server knows the identity of the central server. It causes an increase in performance and reduces the operating cost by the deployment of main server resources into a sub-server resource. It’s beneficial in virtual migration, reducing energy consumption, reducing infrastructural costs, etc.

6. Data Virtualization:  This is the kind of virtualization in which the data is collected from various sources and managed at a single place without knowing more about the technical information like how data is collected, stored & formatted then arranged that data logically so that its virtual view can be accessed by its interested people and stakeholders, and users through the various cloud services remotely. Many big giant companies are providing their services like Oracle, IBM, At scale, Cdata, etc.

Uses of Virtualization

• Data-integration
• Business-integration
• Service-oriented architecture data-services
• Searching organizational data

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