ACL Reality Case Study - Benefits and Implementation of Virtualization

This case study explores the benefits and implementation of virtualization in ACL Reality's data center. It discusses the key attributes of a virtual machine and vApp, and how virtualization can help with disaster recovery and cloud migration. The study also provides an example of an organization that uses virtualization technology in their business.

Running head: ACL REALITY CASE STUDY
ACL Reality Case Study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Question 1..................................................................................................................................2
Question 2..................................................................................................................................4
Question 3..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Question 1
1. ACL Reality would be getting all the benefits for their data centre from
virtualization. The most significant benefits that ACL Reality would be getting are as
follows:
i) Less Heating: This is the first and the foremost advantage of virtualization. It helps
in less heat building up and thus the data centre is controlled and less physical hardware is
used (Mijumbi et al., 2016).
ii) Cost Effective: Virtualization is extremely cost effective and does not incur huge
cost. Since, hardware incurs maximum cost in a data centre and virtualization helps in
eradicating this extra hardware. Thus, extra cost is reduced.
iii) Easy Backups: Virtualization also helps to take easy backups within the data
centre and therefore, ACL Reality would be extremely beneficial with this (Han et al., 2015).
iv) Fast Redeploy: This is the next important benefit of virtualization in data centre. It
helps to redeploy time faster than others.
v) Better Testing: The testing environment is better than in any other process and thus
effective testing could be done in virtual environment.
vi) Better Disaster Recovery: Virtualization can also provide better disaster recovery
in data centre (Liang & Yu, 2015).
vii) Cloud Migration is Easy: The migration to cloud is much easier in virtualization.
2. Data centre virtualization is the procedure for designing, deploying and developing
any data centre on virtualization technologies and even cloud computing technologies. This
type of virtualization allows the visualization of physical servers in the facility of data centre

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with networking, storage, infrastructure equipments and infrastructure devices (Hwang,
Ramakrishnan & Wood, 2015). It is even responsible for producing a virtualized cloud data
centre. This type of virtualization encompasses the wider range of technologies as well as
procedures, which enable the data centre for operating and providing services o the top layer
of virtualization. There are few requirements that are needed before virtualization is
implemented in the data centre of ACL Reality. They are as follows:
i) Processor supporting Intel VT-X.
ii) Minimum memory of 2 GB. NAS reserves memory of 1.5 GB. The detail of this
includes TS-x51 series (Brettel et al., 2014).
iii) Minimum memory of 4 GB. NAS reserves memory of 2 GB. The details of this
includes TS-x70, TS-ECx80 Pro, TS-ECx79U, TS-x70 Pro, TS-ECx79U-SAS-RP, TS-x70U-
RP, TS-ECx80U-RP and SS-ECx79U-SAS-RP series.
iv) Hard disk space at least 550 MB.
v) At least two Ethernet cables.
vi) The other supported NAS series includes TS-x70U-RP, TS-ECx80 Pro, TS-x79U-
RP, SS-ECx79U-SAS-RP, TS-x51/TS-x51-4G, TS-ECx79U-SAS-RP, TS-x79U-RP, TS-x70
and TS-ECx80U-RP (Martins et al., 2014).
These above mentioned requirements are needed for the implementation of
virtualization in the data centre of ACL Reality.
3. The example of an organization that uses virtualization technology in their business
is Coca Cola. It is one of the popular organizations of soft drinks and they utilize the

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technology of virtualization in their business (Koponen et al., 2014). Coca Cola has gained
utmost popularity as they have implemented virtualization in their data centre.
Question 2
1. ACL Reality has decided to implement virtualization for their data centre. There
are some of the major and important attributes in a virtual machine for making it extremely
efficient in terms of effectiveness. The key attributes of a virtual machine are as follows:
i) Simple Installation and Configuration: This is the most important attribute of a
virtual machine. It is extremely simple to install and configure and thus could be easily
utilized by all users. The administrators of IT always manage all the virtual machines to
incorporate backup management in their regular responsibilities (Liang, Yu & Zhang, 2015).
The virtual backup software is available as the appliance, either virtual or physical. It helps in
simplifying and accelerating the initial installation.
ii) Certification of VMware: The second significant attribute of any virtual machine is
the certification of VMware. The faster rates of change as well as adoption within the
virtualized environment put excess demands on the backup software for significantly
protecting and securing it (Blenk et al., 2016). The most effective method for ensuring that
the backup software is upgraded with the advancements within the protection of VM is
virtualization. This protection is mandatory for verifying that the VMware is certified.
iii) Application Aware: The third significant attribute of the virtual machine is the
application aware. There is a requirement in creating application backups absolutely
consistent for changing the role of the agents of backup (Morabito, Kjällman & Komu, 2015).
The agents should facilitate the completion of virtual machine while taking any snapshot.

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iv) Scalability and Efficiency: This is another important attribute of virtual machine.
The scalability and efficiency of the machine is maintained and thus it is claimed as the most
efficient machine from others.
The above mentioned attributes are required while considering an efficient virtual
machine.
2. The virtual machine is the application environment or the operating system, which
is when installed on the software is responsible for the imitating the dedicated hardware. The
user enjoys the similar experience that they have on the dedicated hardware (Li & Chen,
2015). The specialized software is known as the hypervisor and it helps to emulate the CPU
of the server, PC client, network and hard disk properly. Few important points are to be kept
in mind while considering to use a virtual machine as a server. They are as follows:
i) The various operating system environments usually exist simultaneously on isolated
machines.
ii) The virtual machine offers the instruction set architecture, which is different from
the real computers.
iii) The maintenance should be done regularly and the application is provisioned and
is convenient for disaster recovery (Dunbar et al., 2018).
These points are extremely important and should be kept in mind while implementing
the virtual machine. Regular maintenance of the virtual machines helps in the proper
significance of the application.

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Question 3
1. There are various significant differences between a virtual machine and vApp. The
virtual machine can be defined as the server instance where the hardware that is seen by the
operating system of server is being abstracted by the hypervisor from any physical hardware.
The vApp or virtual appliance in the vCloud is the collection of virtual machines,
which work together in performing any function (Liang, Yu & Zhang, 2015).
The virtual machine is the emulation of the computing system. These virtual machines
are completely based on the computer architectures and thus give functionality of the
physical computer. These implementations include the specialized software, hardware and the
combination of the two. There are various types of virtual machines with various functions
like providing substitute for the real machines and provide functionalities for executing the
operating systems (Morabito, Kjällman & Komu, 2015). Any hypervisor utilizes the native
execution for sharing as well as managing the hardware and hence multiple environments are
allowed that are isolated from one another. The modern hypervisors utilize virtualization that
is assisted by the hardware from hosting the CPUs. Moreover, these virtual machines also
help in executing the computer programs in the environment that is based on platform.
The vApp or virtual appliance is the previously configured image of virtual machine
that is ready for running on the hypervisor. These virtual appliances are solely intended for
eliminating the configuration and installation of the software appliance for creating the virtual
appliance. These help to eradicate the maintenance costs of the complex stacks running
(Liang & Yu, 2015). This virtual appliance is not the entire platform of virtual machine,
however the software image that is run on the virtual machine platform of Type 1 and Type 2
hypervisor. This hypervisor is the platform to run on the environment of operating system
and never provides the application software. The virtual appliances are responsible for

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providing the web page user interface for permitting the configuration. It is built for hosting
the single application and thus a new way of applications is deployed.
2. ACL Reality is offered to upgrade their RENET Client Property and CRM
application to the virtual appliance. Virtual appliance would be the best approach for this
organization. There are various advantages and disadvantages of the virtual appliances. The
advantages are as follows:
i) Easy Maintenance: The maintenance is extremely easier and thus could be utilized
by all (Mijumbi et al., 2016).
ii) Cost Effective: This particular technology does not incur huge costs and hence can
be used by all organizations.
iii) Provides Instruction Set: The architecture of instruction set is available and hence
it is very useful and user friendly.
The disadvantages of the virtual appliances are as follows:
i) When all the virtual appliances work on the host computer, the unstable
performance is normal for them (Brettel et al., 2014).
ii) Virtual appliances often become inefficient while accessing the hardware.

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References
Blenk, A., Basta, A., Reisslein, M., & Kellerer, W. (2016). Survey on network virtualization
hypervisors for software defined networking. IEEE Communications Surveys &
Tutorials, 18(1), 655-685.
Brettel, M., Friederichsen, N., Keller, M., & Rosenberg, M. (2014). How virtualization,
decentralization and network building change the manufacturing landscape: An
Industry 4.0 Perspective. International Journal of Mechanical, Industrial Science and
Engineering, 8(1), 37-44.
Dunbar, L., Krishnan, R., McBride, M., Bannai, V., & Ghanwani, A. (2018). A Framework
for Multicast in Network Virtualization over Layer 3.
Han, B., Gopalakrishnan, V., Ji, L., & Lee, S. (2015). Network function virtualization:
Challenges and opportunities for innovations. IEEE Communications
Magazine, 53(2), 90-97.
Hwang, J., Ramakrishnan, K. K., & Wood, T. (2015). NetVM: high performance and flexible
networking using virtualization on commodity platforms. IEEE Transactions on
Network and Service Management, 12(1), 34-47.
Koponen, T., Amidon, K., Balland, P., Casado, M., Chanda, A., Fulton, B., ... & Lambeth, A.
(2014, April). Network Virtualization in Multi-tenant Datacenters. In NSDI (Vol. 14,
pp. 203-216).
Li, Y., & Chen, M. (2015). Software-defined network function virtualization: A survey. IEEE
Access, 3, 2542-2553.

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Liang, C., & Yu, F. R. (2015). Wireless network virtualization: A survey, some research
issues and challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(1), 358-380.
Liang, C., Yu, F. R., & Zhang, X. (2015). Information-centric network function virtualization
over 5G mobile wireless networks. IEEE network, 29(3), 68-74.
Martins, J., Ahmed, M., Raiciu, C., Olteanu, V., Honda, M., Bifulco, R., & Huici, F. (2014,
April). ClickOS and the art of network function virtualization. In Proceedings of the
11th USENIX Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (pp.
459-473). USENIX Association.
Mijumbi, R., Serrat, J., Gorricho, J. L., Bouten, N., De Turck, F., & Boutaba, R. (2016).
Network function virtualization: State-of-the-art and research challenges. IEEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1), 236-262.
Morabito, R., Kjällman, J., & Komu, M. (2015, March). Hypervisors vs. lightweight
virtualization: a performance comparison. In Cloud Engineering (IC2E), 2015 IEEE
International Conference on (pp. 386-393). IEEE.