Che cos’è la virtualizzazione e quali sono i suoi vantaggi?

I vantaggi della virtualizzazione spaziano da una maggiore efficienza, flessibilità e controllo dei costi a un miglioramento dei tempi di attività e di Recovery.

As a core concept of both cloud computing and DevOps, virtualization is easy to take for granted in modern IT. In fact, it might be hard to find a business that doesn’t use some form of the technology. But what is virtualization, and why do we do it? What are the main benefits of virtualization for IT ops teams, developers, and businesses?

Innanzitutto, una definizione semplice: la virtualizzazione è l’astrazione delle risorse IT, quali applicazioni, server, storage, desktop e componenti di rete, in istanze software autonome. Separando queste risorse dall’hardware sottostante, è possibile ottenere i seguenti vantaggi della virtualizzazione:

• Lower expenses
• Rapid flexibility and scalability
• Improved disaster recovery and continuous business
• Increased IT efficiency and productivity
• Better performance and availability
• Faster development

We’ll expand on the nature and key advantages of virtualization below.

Drilling down a level, virtualization is the creation of virtual computer systems known as macchine virtuali (VM) that can be deployed, managed, and moved freely across infrastructure without being constrained by hardware dependencies.

La virtualizzazione può assumere molte forme. Le organizzazioni si affidano comunemente a tecnologie quali:

Application virtualization – Deploying applications within a VM makes it possible for them to run on hardware with an otherwise incompatible operating system. Users can access virtualized applications remotely on any connected device, allowing for a more flexible and mobile work experience while keeping management centralized. Virtualized applications also can be moved easily across physical and cloud infrastructure without having to be reinstalled and reconfigured.

Storage virtualization – Multiple physical storage devices can be consolidated and managed as a single pool, allowing more flexible and efficient use of their combined capacity. With data virtualization, a related technology, a virtual layer integrates data from different sources to provide a unified view for the applications that use it.

Desktop virtualization – Users access their applications and files in a centrally stored and managed virtual desktop rather than the local desktop on their physical endpoint. As with application virtualization, this enables greater flexibility in where people work and the hardware they use while simplifying IT.

Server virtualization – A single physical server is partitioned into multiple virtual servers that can run independently of each other while sharing RAM, CPU, and storage resources. The benefits of server virtualization extend from optimized capacity utilization to better uptime, making it one of the most valuable and commonly adopted forms of virtualization technology.

Network virtualization – Hardware and software network functionality is abstracted into a virtual network with a simplified representation of nodes and links. Multiple LANs can be combined into a single virtual network (VLAN), and a single LAN can be subdivided into multiple VLANs. You also can use network virtualization to emulate a physical network within a single server.

Among many advantages for specific IT priorities and use cases, the following are the six main benefits of virtualization to a company or organization.

1. Lower expenses 
Virtualization can make a huge difference in the efficiency of hardware utilization. By enabling multiple VMs – each with its own self-contained operating system – to share the compute, memory, and storage resources of a single physical server, organizations can reduce the total number of servers needed to run their workloads. In turn, this also lowers costs for power, cooling, and data center space. The benefits of server virtualization are echoed in other forms of virtualization, where portable, hardware-independent VMs allow organizations to choose more cost-effective ways to deploy various resources.

2. Better flexibility and scalability  
In the hardware-based days, it could take weeks or months for a company to deploy a new server or shift workloads from one location to another. That’s much too slow to keep pace with variable demand and changing business requirements. Now, organizations can spin up and move VMs in minutes whenever and wherever they’re needed, whether on-premises or in the cloud, and decommission unneeded VMs just as fast.

3. Improved disaster recovery and continuous business
When a physical device goes down, it can take hours or days to repair it – leaving a gap in the organization’s available resources. When a VM fails, on the other hand, IT can simply deploy a clone and resume normal operations. High-availability configurations no longer call for a pool of duplicate physical servers to sit idle; instead, the business can keep duplicate VMs on standby for deployment on any available server capacity. Fast and simple backup, replication, and restoration of VMs greatly enhances disaster recovery and continuous business, including the ability to shift entire environments to an alternate data center or cloud provider.

4. Increased IT efficiency and productivity
IT teams used to spend endless hours installing, updating, maintaining, and backing up software device by device across the organization. One key benefit of virtualization is the ability to shift most of these tasks to centrally stored and managed VMs. Virtual instances of applications, desktops, servers, network components, and more can be cloned easily for faster deployment at scale.

5. Better performance and availability
Balancing workloads across physical resources and mitigating the impact of failed devices can be a full-time job. With virtualization, IT Ops teams can move VMs easily across the IT infrastructure to load-balance workloads and resolve bottlenecks. The failure of a single VM won’t affect others sharing its host or the system as a whole. VM-level metrics make it easier to optimize resource usage, improve performance, enhance availability, and streamline operations.

6. Faster development
Developers can’t move at agile speed if they have to wait for IT to provision physical servers for development and testing. A key advantage of virtualizing services is the ability of DevOps teams to quickly spin up VMs replicating the production environment for development and testing. Multiple versions of applications, including those built for different operating systems, can run side by side on the same server hardware, enabling developers to simulate a variety of testing and deployment scenarios simultaneously.

Sebbene i benefici della virtualizzazione siano notevoli, esistono anche potenziali sfide e svantaggi da tenere presenti. Ad esempio:

Initial cost – Virtualization technology lowers both capital and operational costs in the long run, but the initial setup can be higher than in a traditional environment.

Security – By increasing the complexity of the computing environment, virtualization introduces new attack vectors and vulnerabilities.

Performance issues – While virtualization can improve performance, resource contention among VMs sharing the same physical infrastructure can have the opposite effect without careful monitoring and management.

Sprawl – VMs are almost too easy to create. Without adequate ownership and accountability for their lifecycle management, organizations can end up with abandoned or forgotten VMs scattered across their infrastructure, consuming resources and undermining security.

Still, the benefits of server virtualization and other forms of virtualization technology far surpass these possible pitfalls. Flexibility, scalability, and development speed are all critical factors in digital business success. Performance and availability are the foundation of an excellent employee and customer experience. IT efficiency, productivity, and cost reduction help organizations improve the impact and ROI of their technology investments. And of course, disaster recovery and business continuity are non-negotiable in today’s unpredictable world.

La chiave sta nel tenere gli occhi aperti e garantire che il personale sia adeguatamente formato. Per massimizzare i vantaggi della virtualizzazione mitigandone al contempo i rischi, assicuratevi che il vostro team IT sia aggiornato sulle più recenti best practice di virtualizzazione in materia di gestione, ottimizzazione e sicurezza.