Virtualization, A Beginner's Guide


Book Description

Migrate to a dynamic, on-demand data delivery platform "If you're looking to hit the ground running with any virtualization project, large or small, this book is going to give you the start you need, and along the way will offer you some cautionary tales that will even take some seasoned virtualization veterans by surprise." --From the foreword by Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst, Burton Group Transform your IT infrastructure into a leaner, greener datacenter with expert guidance from a pair of industry professionals. Through clear explanations, examples, and a five-step deployment plan, Virtualization: A Beginner's Guide shows you how to maximize the latest technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. Consolidate your servers, set up virtual machines and applications, and manage virtual desktop environments. You'll also learn how to implement reliable security, monitoring, and backup procedures. Select a virtualization platform and develop rollout plans Perform pre-deployment network and workstation tests Configure virtual machines, storage devices, and workloads Set up and secure a fully virtualized and highly available server environment Manage a centralized, on-demand application delivery framework Handle volatile and persistent desktop virtualization Use hypervisors to facilitate workload delivery Implement failsafe system backup and recovery strategies




Mastering Microsoft Virtualization


Book Description

The first in-depth, comprehensive guide to Microsoft's suite of virtualization products Virtualization is a hot topic for IT because of the potential it offers for serious economic benefits. While other books treat server virtualization alone, this comprehensive guide provides a complete virtual strategy. You will learn how to deploy a complete virtualization stack with Microsoft's offerings in server virtualization, application virtualization, presentation virtualization, and desktop virtualization. Written by Microsoft technology product specialists, this guide provides real-world focus, enabling you to create a complete IT system that is highly efficient and cost effective. Covers Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V 2.0, Remote Desktop Services, Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) Demonstrates how to deploy a virtual infrastructure-from the server to the desktop Goes beyond any other book on Microsoft virtualization Covers the highly anticipated new feature Live Migration This guide, part of the popular Sybex Mastering series, offers every IT administrator a road map for implementing an efficient and successful virtualization project.




Virtualization Essentials


Book Description

Learn the fundamental concepts and skills by building your own virtual machine Virtualization is more important than ever, it's how the Cloud works! As virtualization continues to expand, millions of companies all over the world are leveraging virtualization. IT professionals need a solid understanding of virtualization concepts and software to compete in today's job market. The updated new edition of Virtualization Essentials teaches you the core concepts and skills necessary to work with virtualization environments. Designed for new and aspiring IT professionals alike, this practical guide offers an applied, real-world approach to help you develop the necessary skill set to work in Cloud computing, the DevOps space, and the rest of the virtual world. Virtualization Essentials simplifies complex concepts to ensure that you fully understand what virtualization is and how it works within the computing environment. Step by step, you’ll learn how to build your own virtual machine, both by scratch and by migrating from physical to virtual. Each user-friendly chapter contains an overview of the topic, a discussion of key concepts, hands-on tutorials, end-of-chapter exercises, review questions, and more. Configure and manage a virtual machine’s CPU, memory, storage, and networking Distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors Compare the leading hypervisor products in today’s market Configure additional devices for a virtual machine Make considerations for availability Understand how cloud computing leverages virtualization Virtualization Essentials is an invaluable ‘learn-by-doing’ resource for new and aspiring IT professionals looking to gain a solid foundation in virtualization. It is also an excellent reference for more experienced IT admins responsible for managing on-premise and remote computers and workstations.




The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor


Book Description

"The Xen hypervisor has become an incredibly strategic resource for the industry, as the focal point of innovation in cross-platform virtualization technology. David's book will play a key role in helping the Xen community and ecosystem to grow." -Simon Crosby, CTO, XenSource An Under-the-Hood Guide to the Power of Xen Hypervisor Internals The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor is a comprehensive handbook on the inner workings of XenSource's powerful open source paravirtualization solution. From architecture to kernel internals, author David Chisnall exposes key code components and shows you how the technology works, providing the essential information you need to fully harness and exploit the Xen hypervisor to develop cost-effective, highperformance Linux and Windows virtual environments. Granted exclusive access to the XenSource team, Chisnall lays down a solid framework with overviews of virtualization and the design philosophy behind the Xen hypervisor. Next, Chisnall takes you on an in-depth exploration of the hypervisor's architecture, interfaces, device support, management tools, and internals including key information for developers who want to optimize applications for virtual environments. He reveals the power and pitfalls of Xen in real-world examples and includes hands-on exercises, so you gain valuable experience as you learn. This insightful resource gives you a detailed picture of how all the pieces of the Xen hypervisor fit and work together, setting you on the path to building and implementing a streamlined, cost-efficient virtual enterprise. Coverage includes Understanding the Xen virtual architecture Using shared info pages, grant tables, and the memory management subsystem Interpreting Xen's abstract device interfaces Configuring and managing device support, including event channels, monitoring with XenStore, supporting core devices, and adding new device types Navigating the inner workings of the Xen API and userspace tools Coordinating virtual machines with the Scheduler Interface and API, and adding a new scheduler Securing near-native speed on guest machines using HVM Planning for future needs, including porting, power management, new devices, and unusual architectures




Hardware and Software Support for Virtualization


Book Description

This book focuses on the core question of the necessary architectural support provided by hardware to efficiently run virtual machines, and of the corresponding design of the hypervisors that run them. Virtualization is still possible when the instruction set architecture lacks such support, but the hypervisor remains more complex and must rely on additional techniques. Despite the focus on architectural support in current architectures, some historical perspective is necessary to appropriately frame the problem. The first half of the book provides the historical perspective of the theoretical framework developed four decades ago by Popek and Goldberg. It also describes earlier systems that enabled virtualization despite the lack of architectural support in hardware. As is often the case, theory defines a necessary—but not sufficient—set of features, and modern architectures are the result of the combination of the theoretical framework with insights derived from practical systems. The second half of the book describes state-of-the-art support for virtualization in both x86-64 and ARM processors. This book includes an in-depth description of the CPU, memory, and I/O virtualization of these two processor architectures, as well as case studies on the Linux/KVM, VMware, and Xen hypervisors. It concludes with a performance comparison of virtualization on current-generation x86- and ARM-based systems across multiple hypervisors.




Virtualization: A Manager's Guide


Book Description

What exactly is virtualization? As this concise book explains, virtualization is a smorgasbord of technologies that offer organizations many advantages, whether you're managing extremely large stores of rapidly changing data, scaling out an application, or harnessing huge amounts of computational power. With this guide, you get an overview of the five main types of virtualization technology, along with information on security, management, and modern use cases. Topics include: Access virtualization—Allows access to any application from any device Application virtualization—Enables applications to run on many different operating systems and hardware platforms Processing virtualization—Makes one system seem like many, or many seem like one Network virtualization—Presents an artificial view of the network that differs from the physical reality Storage virtualization—Allows many systems to share the same storage devices, enables concealing the location of storage systems, and more




Virtual Machines


Book Description

In this text, Smith and Nair take a new approach by examining virtual machines as a unified discipline and pulling together cross-cutting technologies. Topics include instruction set emulation, dynamic program translation and optimization, high level virtual machines (including Java and CLI), and system virtual machines for both single-user systems and servers.




Practical Virtualization Solutions


Book Description

The 100% Practical Guide to Making Virtualization Work in Real Enterprise Environments If you’re involved in planning, deploying, or managing virtualization, this book brings together all the field-proven, in-the-trenches answers and solutions you’ll need. Packed with examples and case studies, Practical Virtualization Solutions is a complete, self-paced, hands-on guide to creating a virtualized environment and driving maximum value from it throughout its entire lifecycle. Kenneth Hess and Amy Newman present detailed costs, schedules, and deployment plans drawn from actual enterprise virtualization projects. You’ll learn what really works and what doesn’t and discover powerful ways to systematically control the costs of virtualization and streamline its management. The authors offer realistic guidance on choosing the best services to virtualize; selecting the right virtualization software, hardware, and vendor partners; troubleshooting and securing virtualized environments; and much more. Along the way, they answer crucial questions IT professionals face in working with virtualization. Coverage includes Quantifying the time, hardware, labor, and downtime needed to implement virtualization Streamlining the transition from physical to virtual Comparing VMware ESXi, VMware Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and other virtualization technologies Identifying opportunities to reduce cost and improve flexibility with open source virtualization technologies Explaining advanced techniques for simplifying virtual machine management Defining the right role for virtualization in networking and storage Automating virtual infrastructure management tasks




VirtualBox


Book Description

VIRTUALBOX An Ultimate Guide Book on Virtualization with VirtualBox This book is a guide to the user on how to use the VirtualBox. It begins by explaining what VirtualBox is, the reason why it is used,and how it is used. The next part is a guide to how one can install the VirtualBox in either Windows or the Linux operating systems. The book will guide you on the various installation steps for VirtualBox in these operating systems. The book then explores how a virtual machine can be created on the VirtualBox. You will learn how to choose the appropriate size for the VirtualBox, as well as how to choose the storage media for the virtual machine. You will also learn how to install and use Guest Additions in VirtualBox. Desktops are also explored, thus, the book will guide you on how to create them. Templates for the pool have also been discussed, and you will learn how to import them into the pool. Cloning of desktops in a pool is also discussed in detail, thus, you will know how to do it. This book will guide you on how to assign desktops to users. Once you have set up the desktop, the book will guide you on how to establish a connection to it. Management of desktops is also explored. The following topics are discussed: Definition Installation of VirtualBox Creating a New Virtual Machine Installation of Guest additions for the VirtualBox How to create the Desktops How to import a Template into the Pool How to set up the Cloning Personalized How to assign users to the Desktops Establishing a connection to the Desktop Management of the Desktops Set up a shared folder Enabling logging for the .MSI host installer of VirtualBox




Virtualization Security


Book Description

Securing virtual environments for VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft hypervisors Virtualization changes the playing field when it comes to security. There are new attack vectors, new operational patterns and complexity, and changes in IT architecture and deployment life cycles. What's more, the technologies, best practices, and strategies used for securing physical environments do not provide sufficient protection for virtual environments. This book includes step-by-step configurations for the security controls that come with the three leading hypervisor--VMware vSphere and ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, and Citrix XenServer. Includes strategy for securely implementing network policies and integrating virtual networks into the existing physical infrastructure Discusses vSphere and Hyper-V native virtual switches as well as the Cisco Nexus 1000v and Open vSwitch switches Offers effective practices for securing virtual machines without creating additional operational overhead for administrators Contains methods for integrating virtualization into existing workflows and creating new policies and processes for change and configuration management so that virtualization can help make these critical operations processes more effective This must-have resource offers tips and tricks for improving disaster recovery and business continuity, security-specific scripts, and examples of how Virtual Desktop Infrastructure benefits security.