Virtualisation carries management burdens

Sep 16, 2005: Although operating system virtualisation has become very popular, with the likes of VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 catching the attention of many users, researchers have identified a burden in managing the environments that are need to host the consolidated workloads.

Tony Iams, the vp and senior analyst from System Software, said that despite the clear advantage provided by virtualisation of allowing multiple servers to be deployed from one central computer, users have to deal the problems of installing and updating large numbers of operating system instances.

"While partitions and virtual machines involve hosting a separate copy of the operating system for each virtualised workload, OS virtualisation uses only a single copy of the operating system that is shared by all virtual operating system instances - just like traditional resource management software.

"The virtual operating system instances create the illusion that workloads are running virtually on their own private machines by making a distinct set of OS resources - including file namespaces; user namespaces and services; IP addresses and hostnames; root passwords; and security profile - visible to the applications."

However, Iams did point out that operating virtualisation tools such as Solaris Containers and SWsoft Virtuozzo provide many of the same benefits as virtual machine, but avoid much of the overhead associated with managing each virtual serer.

He closed by saying that for appropriate workloads, operating system virtualisation tools can help reduce the cost and complexity of managing the overall environment in which multiple consolidated workloads are hosted.

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