Let’s say that you’re a real estate investor with lots of buildings in your portfolio. But you choose not to employ a caretaker when you fully know that you aren’t always available to monitor every building. What do you think will become of some of them?
Now let’s come down to our target industry: software development. Truth is, we are witnessing a thousand and one processes within the life cycle of a software solution and the running of the system. But these processes can be likened to the numerous buildings within the portfolio of the real estate investor. Now, for proper service delivery and increased productivity, the software development firm needs to employ the services of a caretaker to monitor and manage the whole process. This is what virtualization management is.
In this article, we’ll look at what virtualization management is and what it does. Then, we will discuss how and when to use it and then lay out its benefits for the firm that employs its services.
What Is Virtualization?
Virtualization is the process of running a virtual version of a computer system. This way, users can run applications meant for other operating systems without having to switch to another operating system. For example, users working with Windows can run Linux on their devices via virtualization.
Virtualization is important in the software industry. Especially in cloud computing. For instance, VMware allows developers to run any application on the cloud using any device, without incurring downtime.
Types of Virtualization
There are six types of virtualization in software development. Let’s explore them and their differences.
Network Virtualization
Network virtualization allows users to run multiple virtual networks separately. An example of this is setting up a virtual private network (VPN), which has separate control and data plans.
Server Virtualization
In server virtualization, a physical server is broken down into multiple virtual servers by changing the processors/identity numbers. This allows each subserver to manage its operating system individually, thereby increasing performance.
Application Virtualization
An application server allows a user to run two different versions of an application easily. This type of virtualization gives a user remote access to an application with the help of a server.
Storage Virtualization
In storage virtualization, users can manage storage data seamlessly without knowing where data is stored. This type of virtualization manages data storage from different locations, sending these data to the user like they’re in a single location. It maintains smooth operation and consistent performance.
Data Visualization
In data virtualization, data is collected from different sources and managed at a point. For instance, in MongoDB cloud, data is collected from different users without the users worrying about how formatting or collecting data is done.
Desktop Virtualization
Desktop virtualization allows users to store their OS virtually. This enables them to access their OS from anywhere. Also, users can switch from one OS to another easily. An advantage of this virtualization method is portability.
What Is Virtualization Management?
To get the best out of virtualization, it’s important to monitor the activities of virtual servers and machines. Virtualization management is the process of managing the operations of a virtual environment. It involves the running, monitoring, and maintenance of virtual servers and machines in an environment.
How Virtualization Management Works
Virtualization management works by interacting with the hypervisor of a virtual machine. To understand how this works, let’s first understand what a hypervisor is.
You can call a hypervisor a virtual machine monitor (VMM). It is software that runs virtual machines. The hypervisor separates the operating systems from the computer hardware, which allows the host machine to independently run guest virtual machines.
Next, the virtual management tool syncs with the hypervisor to get information on the health and status of all virtual machines. Then the system sends this information to the user as charts and graphs in a way that the user can understand. Aside from getting information on the health and status of virtual machines, virtualization management also involves all other management activities, like coordinating and administrating tasks in virtual machines. For instance, virtualization management can involve the creation, modification, and deletion of virtual machines.
When to Use Virtualization Management
In this era of remote working, virtualization management has become an important factor for software development teams. For example, most firms that incorporate remote working rely on cloud computing to execute their processes efficiently. Sometimes, teams need to create virtual machines and servers to set up cloud computing for better communication. For large teams, these virtual machines can become numerous and difficult to manage. To make it easier to manage virtual infrastructures, teams integrate virtualization management into their dashboard.
Streamlining Your Dashboard With Virtualization Management
A GUI (graphical user interface) is a user-friendly option for passing information. It allows users to visualize what’s going on in their computers in order to be able to act accordingly.
With virtualization management tools, users can manage virtual infrastructures by incorporating the response of virtualization management into their dashboards. Although this seems like a difficult task, tools like Netreo allow for easy virtualization management by integrating responses to your dashboard. An advantage of tools like this is the ability to manage all your activities together in a place (dashboard). This method allows for better efficiency, and this is what streamlining your dashboard is all about.
Benefits
Virtualization management is of utmost importance to the overall productivity of software development firms. It has helped in the following ways.
Reduced Operational Cost
With the adoption of virtualization management, the operational costs of most software firms have drastically reduced. It is more expensive to try monitoring each and every part of your system one after the other. But with virtualization management, all of the systems in your ecosystem can be monitored and managed using one virtual machine manager.
System Optimization
Virtualization management helps to optimize your system to improve performance.
It also helps lower the probability of having system downtime. Virtualization management tends to rebalance your system power, as well as the resources inherent with your system to boost overall performance. It also has the capability of going through your entire system and unlocking some great but hidden resources and abilities your system possesses.
Overall System Monitoring
With virtualization management in place, DevOps team members do not need to worry or spend most of their time trying to keep the IT environment up and running. Virtualization management handles that for us, as the VMM is constantly monitoring the entire system. One other benefit of this is that the team now has more time to focus on innovation.
Detection and Resolution of Faults
Virtualization management helps in the detection of any anomalies in the system. It also diagnoses and tends to resolve issues before they become huge blows to the entire system. This is also a great way of mitigating the possibility of having system downtime.
Conclusion
Virtualization management is not all rosy, even with all of its benefits. For example, it involves lots of links in a chain that are expected to work together. Therefore, it’s important to have experienced developers. Also, virtualization management can cost money to set up.
However, if incorporated properly, virtualization management can help you streamline your dashboard for optimized and efficient results. Do you wish to employ the services of a top-notch virtualization management platform? Check out Netreo and schedule a demo for an exciting experience.
This post was written by Ukpai Ugochi. Ukpai is a full stack JavaScript developer (MEVN), and she contributes to FOSS in her free time. She loves to share knowledge about her transition from marine engineering to software development to encourage people who love software development and don’t know where to begin.