What is Virtualization?

Virtualization refers to the creation of virtual computers to efficiently share computation power and hardware resources by creating a virtualization layer between the hardware components and the user.

This layer enables the creation of multiple virtual machines on a single physical computer. These virtual machines also require similar hardware resources as any regular computer. The virtualization layer helps the virtual machines to share a single set of hardware components with the physical machine. This layer configures the physical hardware resources such as processor, random access memory (RAM), storage drive, graphics cards, network interface card, etc. into virtual resources.

You can create many virtual machines on a single physical computer. Each virtual machine can host different operating systems. These virtual machines are running on top of the virtualization layer which is being managed by the VMware workstation.

Why use Virtualization?

• The main reason to use virtualization is to share a single set of hardware resources using multiple virtual machines. This helps you to reduce the time, cost and energy spent on creating and maintaining a physical computer infrastructure with multiple hardware resources.
• Virtualization increases efficiency and security by providing the ability to move copy and isolate virtual machines easily and faster. The efficiency is increased as the users can multitask by creating multiple virtual machines to perform tasks in parallel. The security issues can be reduced and handled easily as the virtual machines act as thin clients and can be easily isolated to resolve security issues.
• Cloud hosting is another form of virtualization that helps you share data storage and computing power through cloud computing where a centralized set of resources is shared through multiple users via the Internet.