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What is paravirtualization and what are its benefits for businesses and organizations of all sizes
Paravirtualization is the ability of a hypervisor to provide virtual CPUs or cores to other operating systems. The most common example of this is virtual machines running on a single physical computer with one or more operating systems installed. The hypervisor creates and manages the virtual machines, and then allows the operating systems to manipulate the hardware. This allows a number of benefits for organizations. The ability to scale out for low cost increases can be added to existing infrastructures. The savings in electricity usage is also a boon for businesses as a whole. By replacing 80-90% or more of their power by doing so, organizations can save significant amounts of money on their utilities bills. The hardware, software and maintenance cost savings are also significant to organizations.
Not only do organizations have the ability to scale out their environment, but they have the ability to have their resources available 24/7/365. This allows organizations to be able to respond more quickly when responding to a natural disaster or other business continuity issue. The benefits of this can be seen across many industries and sectors. Healthcare and financial services are two sectors that can greatly benefit from the ability to provide resources to their clients without fear of system downtime. The ability to quickly deploy new systems at any time, as well as provide resources when an issue arises, will be invaluable for organizations. [END ARTICLE]
“paravirtualization is ideal for…What is Paravirtualization and what are its benefits for businesses and organizations of all sizes” [1]
How does paravirtualization work, and how can it be implemented in a way that is most beneficial to your specific needs
The hypervisor runs on top of the hardware. It allows multiple operating systems to coexist and share the same hardware. The virtualization layer runs concurrently with the physical operating system, but only has virtual resources available to access. The concept of paravirtualization is that a guest operating system is given special instructions, or drivers, which allow it to communicate with the hypervisor. These drivers can also be used to provide better performance and efficiency for processes running within that operating system.
By using paravirtualization, the management of virtual resources is done by the operating system itself. This can lead to better performance from the applications, because they are not reliant on the hypervisor for managing memory and storage. In hypervisors that are implemented with paravirtualization, there can be significant performance gains in disk and network access.
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Linux Kernel Support for Paravirtualization [OPTIONAL]
The top five reasons why paravirtualization should be the go-to virtualization solution for your business or organization
Financial savings are a big reason why companies should be implementing paravirtualization. It can pay for itself in just a few years. This allows organizations to have their existing infrastructure moved over to a different hardware platform that is cheaper for them to use and leverage. The cost of running an HV/paravirtualized cloud is cheaper per core and per watt than hypervisor-based clouds. By doing so, you can reduce your overall costs. For example, a manufacturer could redesign their computer systems on paravirtualization and save millions of dollars, which can then be used to focus on other companies.
Paravirtualization provides faster virtualization speeds for application servers and guest operating system speed. This helps to streamline communication between the server and the guest operating system by reducing latency and kernal overhead. Through this faster communication, applications run at a higher performance level that is more efficient than using other virtualization solutions.
How can you get started with paravirtualization, and what resources are available to help you learn more about this powerful technology
Getting started with paravirtualization is easy. Many virtualization platforms have a template called paravirtualized (PV) that allows organizations to create and deploy hypervisor-based virtual machines quickly. These templates can be used in a free, open source operating system such as Ubuntu, CentOS, or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. It can be used as a standalone system or within a virtualization environment. It can also be used in conjunction with cloud computing. For example, you could run one instance of the operating system on your own physical hardware and then move it over to a cloud provider when you need it, serving your customers better while decreasing your costs.
Once your organization understands the benefits of paravirtualization, you can move from a virtualization architecture to an operating system that is individually optimized for running on a paravirtualized hypervisor. Paravirtualization-enabled operating systems can be installed on the same infrastructure as traditional operating systems or in your own datacenter.
Case studies of businesses and organizations that have seen tremendous success thanks to paravirtualization
Savvis saved over $500,000 per month by utilizing Parallels virtualized servers for their cloud infrastructure. They chose Parallels because it allowed them to use their existing servers and upgrade them from their previous server operating systems to a new one. The cost of each computer was reduced by as much as 700%. The company also saw a reduction of $80,000 per month in costs. In addition to saving money, Savvis also saw a reduction in their energy costs. All these savings were achieved without any additional IT staff.
In their most recent release (2.3), Parallels has included a virtualized management interface that frees IT Staff from the burden of managing virtual machines on the bare metal. The interface includes a graphical view, which allows IT staff to perform basic tasks, such as power-on or power-off a VM and manage disk space with snapshots. The management console also shows VM lifespans and allows administrators to manage snapshots and VMs from a single interface. This interface serves as an alternative to the traditional command-line commands.
The management console was a major part of Parallels Cloud Manager 2.3. The updates to this software also include the ability for IT staff to specify which VMs should be saved or restored if a server crashes. Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, VMware ESX/ESXi 4.1, and ESXi 5.0 are also included in the new version of virtualization software.
