Discussion: Virtualization Advantages, Disadvantages, and Applications

This discussion post examines virtualization, a fundamental technology for cloud computing, by exploring its advantages and disadvantages in the context of enterprise networking. The post highlights benefits such as reduced spending, easier disaster recovery, increased business continuity, and improved IT efficiency. Conversely, it addresses drawbacks like upfront costs, software licensing considerations, and the need for expert IT staff. The discussion draws on research and professional insights, emphasizing virtualization's rapid evolution and its impact on virtualizing desktops, servers, networks, and entire data centers. References are provided to support the discussion, offering a comprehensive overview of the topic.

Running head: VIRTUALIZATION
Virtualization
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
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1VIRTUALIZATION
Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual version of something like the
operating system, or a software, or a server, a storage space or a network resource.
Virtualization is considered to be the fundamental technology associated with the enabling of
the development as well as the operation of cloud computing services. This technology is
associated with bringing a lot of advantages as well as disadvantages some of them have been
listed below:
Advantages of Virtualization
 Reduction in excess spending as only few numbers of servers are required and no need of
extra hardware. Besides the lifespan of the existing hardware increases and the cost of
energy required decreases.
 Easy backing up and recovery at times of disaster (Chamberlin et al., 2017). The recovery
process becomes quicker along with being swift and accurate. Less manpower and
equipment’s are required.
 Ensures business continuity due to increased mobile workforce. Virtualization is
associated with providing access to the software, files and communications anywhere and
anytime.
 IT operations becomes more efficient as the jobs becomes easier and this also provides
the technicians with easy facility of installing and maintaining the system (Mousa &
Shiratuddin, 2015). This can be done in less time as required by the non-virtual systems.
Disadvantages of Virtualization
 Responsible for Upfront costs as huge investment is required to adopt the virtualization
software, along with the requirement of additional hardware (Kumar & Charu, 2015).
This depends on your existing network.

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 Software licensing considerations is another disadvantage that is of less problem because
of the adaptation of the virtualization by different software vendors however the software
also needs to have a clear understanding of the technology as well.
 Implementation and management of the virtualized environment requires expert IT staff
whereas from the user side a typical virtual environment would be operating as a non-
virtual environment.

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References:
Chamberlin, J., Hussey, J., Klimkowski, B., Moody, W., & Morrell, C. (2017, September).
The Impact of Virtualized Technology on Undergraduate Computer Networking
Education. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference on Information Technology
Education (pp. 109-114). ACM.
Kumar, R., & Charu, S. (2015). Comparison between cloud computing, grid computing,
cluster computing and virtualization. International Journal of Modern Computer
Science and Applications, 3(1), 42-47.
Mousa, A. H., & Shiratuddin, N. (2015, December). Data Warehouse and Data Virtualization
Comparative Study. In Developments of E-Systems Engineering (DeSE), 2015
International Conference on (pp. 369-372). IEEE.

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Bibliography:
Brauner, C. (2017). Storage management in LXD 2.15. Retrieved from
https://blog.ubuntu.com/2017/07/12/storage-management-in-lxd-2-15
Clutch. (2018). What cloud storage providers offer small businesses. Retrieved from
https://clutch.co/cloud/storage/resources/what-cloud-storage-offers-small-businesses
Evans, C. (2017). Using containers for persistent storage. Retrieved from
https://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-infrastructure/using-containers-persistent-
storage/1653664878
Gildred, J. (2018). Online storage vs online backup: What’s the difference? Retrieved from
https://www.cloudwards.net/online-storage-vs-online-backup-whats-the-difference/
Robb, D. (2016). Cloud storage pros and cons. Retrieved from
http://www.infostor.com/backup-and_recovery/cloud-storage/cloud-storage-pros-and-
cons.html