Introduction To Virtualization

Virtualization is the latest in a long line of technical innovations
designed to increase the level of system abstraction
and enable IT users to harness ever-increasing levels of
computer performance.

At its simplest level, virtualization allows you, virtually and
cost-effectively, to have two or more computers, running two
or more completely different environments, on one piece of
hardware.

In slightly more technical terms, virtualization essentially
decouples users and applications from the specific hardware
characteristics of the systems they use to perform computational
tasks. This technology promises to usher in an entirely
new wave of hardware and software innovation. For example,
and among other benefits, virtualization is designed to simplify
system upgrades (and in some cases may eliminate the
need for such upgrades), by allowing users to capture the
state of a virtual machine (VM), and then transport that state
in its entirety from an old to a new host system.

Virtualization is also designed to enable a generation of more
energy-efficient computing. Processor, memory, and storage
resources that today must be delivered in fixed amounts
determined by real hardware system configurations will be
delivered with finer granularity via dynamically tuned VMs.