Virtualization Project Question

[karbounos]

Hello everybody,

 

I do a group project about Virtualization and how can this be applied to my College's labs and our professor came up with a question:

 

Is Virtualization the only available solution? Why is it better than other ways that offer efficiency improvements?

 

Atm, our labs have individual computers in and we support that VMs will give the following benefits:

1. overall cost reduction (maintainance, electricity, increased hardware purchasing cycle)
2. flexibility
3. environmental friendly (electricity)
4. security
5. Almost impossible to lose data (except physical destruction)
6. hard drives can be fully utilized and give personal space to the students
7. remote control
8. efficiency

Any idea about virtualization substitude solutions?

[KTFO|SGTmoody]

Have a look at Linux jails. It's not virtuliseation but it can separate running applications.

To add to your list:

Reduction of physical media, no need to load OS's off USB's and CD's any more

Increased number of computers in a network. Good for separating out applications and testing things.

Snapshots. If you break something you can quickly roll back to a previous version

Exporting. You can export your VM's in to OVA's so you can quickly deploy more of the same os or take them home to work on.

Space. Less physical machines means everyone can sit at a work station and work on labs with out actually having to be in front of the pc

There are many more.

There isn't really anything else like virtuliseation because it is what it is and does what it does. But take a look at the Linux jails allthough VM's are still better in a lab environment.

If you wanted downsides :

The need to improve infrastructure to compensate for network load. Imagine if your whole class started building VM's all at the same time, the network could grind to a halt with all the ISO transfers

The need for better hardware to support a number of VM's

I think his question is flawed a bit. There is not another more efficient way to do it. Otherwise everyone else would be doing it and not moving over to Hyper visors.

Some companies have managed to cut their server foot print on half due to VM's so this is efficient. Unless of course he wants you all riding static bysicles powering raspberry pie's!