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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 8 2008, 5:26 PM EST | todd_muirhead | 4 words added, 3 words deleted |
| Dec 13 2007, 4:10 PM EST | todd_muirhead | 106 words added, 1 word deleted |
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Virtualization is a term that can be used to descibe many things in the world of computers. It is commonly used to today to generically refer to System or Server Virtualization. Dell PowerEdge servers can be used to run many different virtualization products. This page serves as a basic reference for the different virtualization products / approaches that are available.
VMware
VMware ESX Server and Virtual Center (which are parts of VMware Infrastructure 3) are for enterprise server virtualization. The ESX Server hypervisor runs directly on the hardware, and in conjunction with Virtual Center, provides the ability to hot-migrate or VMotion virtual machines from one physical server to another without interuption to the operation of virtual machine.
VMware Server runs on top of a host OS (either Windows or Linux) and provides the ability to run VMs on the system in addition to the host OS that is also running on the system. There is no capability to VMotion between VMware Server systems, but they can be managed with Virtual Center.
VMware Workstation is simliar to VMware Server in that it runs on top of a host OS, but it is designed for the developer with robosut snapshot features.
VMplayer is a thin virtualization product that allows for a system to run or "play" a VM, but does not provide the capability to create or modify VMs.
Microsoft Virtualization
Microsoft Virtual Server runs on top of windows and can be managed with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
Microsoft Windows Serverserver Virtualizationvirtualization Hyper-V (code named Veridian) is the next generation virtualization product that Micrsoft has announced will be made available for WIndowsWindows Server 2008 within 180 days of the launch of Windows Server 2008.
Xen
Xen is an open source hypervisor that is included with the currently shipping versions of RedHat Linux Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Virtual Browser
The concept of a virtual browser is to use a virtualization layer on a client system to provide an insulated browser that is makes the system more resistant to spyware, viruses, and malware while also being very easy to reset back to a known good state.
Desktop virtualization
Desktop virtualization is in many ways different from "normal" virtualization, however, it needs to be mentioned in an overview. Desktop virtualization means that the PC you are working on is not the machine that does the actual computing work. Typically, you will use a software like Citrix and control one user-context on a server in the datacenter with your keyboard, mouse and monitor. Further software examples besides Citrix include NX and VNC.
