Chutneytech | UK Technology News

Quite simply Virtualization is the method of running a pseudo-computer as if it was just another application running on a real computer. The virtualized system believes it has a hard drive to itself, but the reality is that its entire file system is contained within disk files on another underlying file system. The virtualized computer will act as though it were physically installed on a computer, with the processor and resources to itself.

Virtualization makes for a terrific test environment, as the virtual computer doesn’t have to be the same operating system as the host it runs on. What this means is that you could trial different Linux distros within virtual PCs on your Windows-based computer. This takes away the risk factor of harming your Windows installation, but you still reap the benefits of a real Linux deployment.

However, it doesn’t just work with Linux on Windows, you might want to trial Windows Server software on your Linux or Windows XP or Vista system. You can mock-up a multi-server environment on a single computer by running more that one virtual PC with its own configurations.

The computer architecture doesn’t even have to match. You can easily run a 32-bit virtual PC on a 64-bit computer. This is where the advantages of legacy application support comes in to play. For example, you may have an old Windows NT program your business must continue supporting, yet you don’t want to maintain a Windows NT computer. You could have amazingly shiny servers running a more contemporary server operating system, that doesn’t matter what is installed on them, nor if they are 64-bit machines. You can create a virtual 32-bit Windows NT environment for your legacy program to run on. This gives the impression that it’s running on such a computer, and you’ve removed the hassle of maintaining old hardware.

Down to the fact that file systems for virtual computers are just disk files within a parent environment you can easily perform a backup with a straightforward disk copy. This allows you to make up backups prior to implementing any changes on your virtual PC. If something goes wrong then you don’t have to panic; recovery is nothing more than closing the virtual machine, replacing the file system disk file with a backup copy and restarting. As far as your virtual computer knows, nothing happened: anything between making the backup and restoring did not happen.

For Virtualized Network Installations and Consultancy, Contact us here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Virtualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.