Information & Communication

Architecture 2 [BINF 405]

GUC - Spring 2024 – Lecture 5

Virtualisation

Dr. Ayman Al-Serafi

TAs: Ghada Ahmed, Tameem Alghazaly, Youssef Ihab, Mohab Gehad

Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Analysis of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion
Q&A breaks
between sections

Urgent Qs only in
between!
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-2
Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Analysis of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-3

Information & Communication Architecture
Components

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-4

 Cloud Computing
• All clients are thin clients

• All applications stored on application

servers connected to the Internet

• Client gets application logic and data

stored remotely on a distributed
computing network over the Internet

How can we share

computer resources in
cloud computing
servers and services?

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-5

Cloud computing - Features
 Agility – On demand computing infrastructure
 Linearly scalable – challenge

 Reliability and fault tolerance

 Self healing – backups, etc
 SLA driven – Policies on how quickly requests are processed via service level
agreement

 Virtualized – decoupled from underlying hardware. Multiple

applications can run in one computer

 Data, Data, Data

 Distributing, partitioning, security, and synchronization

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 6

Cloud Anatomy
 Application (Software) Services:
 Gmail, GoogleCalender
 Payroll, HR, CRM etc
 Sugar CRM, IBM Lotus Live
 Platform Services:
 Middleware, Intergation, Messaging,
Information, connectivity, programming
compilers and environment, etc
 AWS, IBM Virtual images, Boomi, CastIron,
Google Appengine, Microsoft Azure Platform
 Infrastructure as services:
 Full computer stack (Operating System and
kernel) access without pre-installed or
restricted platforms or software
  Most flexible cloud computing infrastructure!
 IBM Blue house, VMWare, Amazon EC2,, Sun
Parascale

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 7

Why Virtualisation?
 Hardware is under utilized
 Many data centers today have machines running at only 5-15% of the total
processing capacity. In other words, 85-90% of the machine’s power is unused.
 By applying virtualization, organizations can improve their hardware utilization
from 5-15% to 70-80%.

 Data centers are running out of storage space

 Energy costs are skyrocketing

 Especially nowadays with the global economical instabilities and event!
 Also sustainability requirements nowadays need energy saving!

 System administration cost are increasing

 Computer systems do not operate on their own. Every server requires proper care and feeding by
system administrators who, as part of the operations group, ensure that the server runs properly;
 System administration is labor intensive and system administrators do not come cheap;

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-8

Introduction to Virtualisation
 Traditional virtualization: Splitting the computing capabilities on a
single server or PC using virtual machines (VMs) or
distributing an application over multiple servers.

 Virtualization will create a virtual version of a device or resource,

such as a server, storage device, network or even an operating
system where the framework divides the resource into one or more
execution environments.

 the processor’s power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for
only as needed.
 What are other resources to share?

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-9

 Hardware Operating System

e.g. keyboard e.g. Windows 10

Monitor

Software

Word, excel,

Hardware Computer
+ Software

Operating System

Data

server ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 10

 • Computing Infrastructure Components

Computer hardware platforms

Operating system platforms

IT Infrastructure
has 5 main Enterprise software applications
components

Data management and storage

Networking/telecommunications / Internet
platforms

11
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
 • Computing Infrastructure Components

Operating system platforms

• Operating systems control the computer resources and
running applications
a. Client level: 95% run Microsoft Windows ( 7, 10)

b. Server level: 85% run Unix or Linux

Enterprise software applications

Enterprise application providers: like SAP and Microsoft

12
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
 • Computing Infrastructure Components

Data management and storage

a. Database software:
• IBM (DB2), PostgreSQL, Microsoft (SQL Server),
• Sybase (Adaptive Server Enterprise), MySQL

b. Physical secondary data storage:

• Example: Seagate, Western Digital

13
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
 • Computing Infrastructure Components

Networking/telecommunications platforms
a. Telecommunication services

• Telecommunications, cable, and Internet access

 (bandwidth consumption)

b. Network hardware providers: e.g. Cisco, Linksys, etc.

14
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
The Problem To Fix
 Real world estimates of average server
utilization in data centers range from 5% to
20%. 

 Virtualisation fixes this problem by allowing to

share computing resources by different
organisations
 E.g., shared website hosting!

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 15

 • Computing Infrastructure Components

Internet platforms
a. Hardware, software, management services
• to support company Web sites, Web applications

• including Web hosting services

16
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
Example: Shared Website Hosting
 A shared web hosting service is a web hosting service where
many websites reside on one web server connected to the
Internet.
 This is generally the most economical option for hosting, as the
overall cost of server maintenance is spread over many
customers.
 By choosing shared hosting, the website will share a physical
server with one or more other websites.
 How can we support this?
 Answer: via Virtualisation Mechanisms

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-17

Virtual Private Server
 Website hosted on multiple virtual machines
on many servers
 Each “virtual” machine has its dedicated
Operating System (OS) and “share” of
secondary memory, CPU, physical memory,
etc.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-18

Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Benefits of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion

Q&A
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-19
Virtualization Technology

VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 VM 4
Other
Windows Windows Applications
2000 Unix Linux
10

Virtualization Virtualization
Software Hardware
Host Operating System

Physical Hardware

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-20

Non-virtualized vs. Virtualized
system

Virtual Virtual
Container Container
App. A App. B App. C App. D

App. A App. B App. C App. D

Operating System
Virtualization Layer

Hardware
Hardware
‘Nonvirtualized’ system
A single OS controls all Virtualized system
hardware platform It makes it possible to run multiple
Virtual Containers on a single physical
resources
platform
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-21
Computing Infrastructure
• 1 machine  1 OS  several applications
• Applications can affect each other
• Big disadvantage:
• machine utilization is very low, most of the times it
is below than 25%

App App App App App App App App

X86 X86
X86 X86
Windows Windows
Suse Red Hat
XP 2003

12% Hardware 15% Hardware 18% Hardware 10% Hardware

Utilization Utilization Utilization Utilization

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-22

Computing Infrastructure - Virtualization
• It has the benefits of high hardware utilization with running several
operating systems (applications) in separated virtualized
environments
– Each application runs in its own operating system
– Each operating system does not know it is sharing the underlying
hardware with others

App. A App. B App. C App. D

X86 X86 X86 X86

Windows Windows Suse Red Hat
XP 2003 Linux Linux

X86 Multi-Core, Multi Processor

70% Hardware Utilization

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-23

 Why cloud computing?
 SCALABILITY: The appearance of infinite computing resources available on
demand, quickly enough to follow load surges, thereby eliminating the need for
cloud computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning.
 FLEXIBILITY: The elimination of an up-front commitment by cloud users,
thereby allowing companies to start small and increase hardware resources only
when there is an increase in their needs via pay-as-you-go approach
 ADAPTABILITY: The ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-
term basis as needed (for example, processors by the hour and storage by the day)
and release them as needed, thereby rewarding conservation by letting machines
and storage go when they are no longer useful.
 BEST PRACTICE: The utilization of best practice and IT architectures from cloud
computing service providers without the need for having internal experts or
qualified system architects
 Example: Denial of Service attacks (DoS) prevention by monitoring and filtering client requests
using web application firewall
 ECONOMIES OF SCALE: Lowers costs to run data and computing centers due to
economies of scale, due to virtualization of resources to fully utilize them
efficiently!

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 24

Creating a Virtual Machine

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-25

Creating a Virtual Machine

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-26

Creating a Virtual Machine

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-27

Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Analysis of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion

Q&A
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-28
Forms of virtualization
 The typical goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative
tasks while improving scalability and work loads across a
system or network.

 Virtualization in a computing environment can be present in

many different forms, some of which are:
A. Hardware virtualization (server virtualization)

 On one Machine!
B. Server clustering

 Multiple Machines
C. Desktop virtualization

 Network Remote Access

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-29

A. Hardware-assisted
virtualization
 the virtual machine has its own hardware and
allows a guest OS to be run in isolation.
 Intel VT (IVT)  Has to be enabled in System
BIOS (basic input/output system) firmware!
 AMD virtualization (AMD-V)
 Examples:
 VMware Fusion
 Parallel Desktop for Mac
 Parallel Workstation

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-30

B. Server clustering
 A method that allows multiple servers to be treated as a single
server.
 Clustering is a form of virtualization that makes several locally
attached physical systems appear to the application and end users
as a single processing resource.
 Hides underlying network addresses
 This differs significantly from server hardware virtualization
technologies, which normally achieve the opposite effect.
 Usage: High volume application, or as a Web farm which is a
location of web servers that can all handle load for a Web
based application.
 Supports high availability (load balancing), fault tolerance (if
one server goes down), and faster / more efficient processing
(parallel processing)

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-31

 Load balancer distributes the

Server clustering requests so any server which

is underutilized would get
more requests to handle, so
that requests become evenly
spread over servers in the
cluster

Source: Wikipedia

Many servers connected to a

network, e.g., TCP/IP Ethernet,
and serving one web application
or enterprise system

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-32

 Example: Content Delivery
Networks (CDNs)
CDN is an umbrella term spanning
United States different types of content delivery
China
services for websites and web
applications: video streaming,
Egypt software downloads, web and
mobile content acceleration,
Japan licensed/managed CDN,
transparent caching, and services
to measure CDN performance, load
balancing, Multi CDN switching and
Netherlands analytics and cloud intelligence.
Germany
CDN vendors may cross over into
other industries like security, with
DDoS protection and web
application firewalls (WAF), and
Source: Thesis “Multi-Criteria Optimization of
Content Delivery within the Future Media
WAN optimization.
Internet” by: Joachim Bruneau-Queyreix
Load balancing is distributing equally the requests
for content across distributed remote servers,
based on requesters location 5-33
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi
Example: EMR of Amazon
 EMR is a cloud-service big data platform that offers
quick and cost-efficient analysis of massive amount of
data. It is one of Amazon services that is offered on-
demand and hosted within Amazon infrastructure.
 Based on MapReduce and Apache Spark We covered this in
Big Data lecture!

 It runs Hadoop clusters to distribute the computation

among Amazon EC2 instances and S3.
 Hadoop clusters could be scaled up or shrunk on demand to
provide quick analysis of data.
  Supports parallel processing of large amount of data for quicker and
more efficient analysis.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 34

Amazon EMR Big Data Platform

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-35

C. Desktop Virtualization
 In desktop virtualization, desktops are hosted in own
data center and can be accessed from any device,
anywhere.
 This allows remote access and improve IT operations.
 Admin services are provided from an offsite cloud-based data
center.
 Additionally, DaaS is an economical, pay-per-user approach that
provides desktops and reduces the day-to-day IT responsibilities
for end-user computing.
 Example: Desktop as a service (DaaS) provides the
same benefits as on-premises desktop virtualization,
including reduced desktop IT costs, improved security,
increased control, and expanded connectivity.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-36

 Remote Desktop / Server
Access Virtualisation
 Allows full-access
to a machine
remotely via a
computer network
(e.g., Internet)
 Provides full control
of the host
operating system
and all applications
installed on it
 E.g., TeamViwer or
Microsoft Windows
Remote Desktop
Server, etc.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-37

Remote Desktop / Server
Access Virtualisation Source: www.windowscentral.com

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-38

Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Analysis of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion

Q&A
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-39
The benefits of virtualization
 Server consolidation to support Cloud
Computing:
 Allows you to increase the utilization of your server
infrastructure without purchasing additional pieces of
hardware.

 Energy conservation:
 In addition to savings in hardware costs, virtualization
software may also save you money on your energy
bill. According to Energy Star, the energy costs for
running a server for a year will soon exceed the price
of acquiring it.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-40

Virtualisation and Cloud
Computing?
 Essentially, virtualization differs from cloud
computing (CC) because virtualization is
software that manipulates H/W, while CC
refers to a service that results from that
manipulation.

 Virtualization is a fundamental element /

component of cloud computing and helps
deliver on the value of cloud computing.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-41

The benefits of virtualization
 Ease of management:
 Managing virtual machines is a lot easier than
managing “real” machines, since hardware upgrades,
for example, can be done with the click of several
buttons, rather than having to physically have access to
the machine, power down the machine, install the
hardware, verify the change, then power up again.
 Moreover, managing virtual machines can often be
done via a console server over a network, thereby
reducing the time needed to deploy them.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-43

The benefits of virtualization
 Reducing backup and recovery time:
 Since virtual machines are essentially files, backing up
and restoring them is a lot less time-consuming by just
copying those “files”.

 While the files can be huge, a directory of many 10-

GB files is still easier to restore than a real machine of
the same specifications.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-44

The benefits of virtualization
 Testing software configurations:
 Another way you can use virtualization software is for
testing software configurations before deploying them on a
live system. If you needed to verify whether a program is
incompatible with your existing setup, for example, you
may try testing in on a virtual machine first.

 This can be immensely useful for organizations that have

legacy systems or applications and must test out systems
before deploying them.

 Virtual machines can also interact with one another in

virtual networks, allowing you to test server-client
applications virtually.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-45

The benefits of virtualization
 Maintaining legacy applications:
 If you do have old applications that have compatibility issues
with newer software or that must run on a certain version of an
operating system, you can dedicate a virtual machine just for
those tasks. That way, your IT architecture and planning won't be
constrained because of a few applications.
 Maintaining a cross-platform office:
 It is not uncommon for offices that run mostly Mac to need to run
one or two Windows-only programs; in this case, virtual software
can be an affordable, easy way to do this. Note, however, that the
reverse is not applicable; many virtualization applications for
PCs allow you to run Linux, but not Mac operating systems.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-46

 Drawbacks of virtualization
Performance Issues:
 Virtualization software adds a certain amount of overhead to the
computer system on which it is running.

 Determining the overall impact that virtualization software

imposes is a difficult task, but generally speaking, virtualization
software has a minimal impact on processor and main memory
performance.

 A more significant impact is imposed on the disk and networking

performance of the system.
Remember secondary
memory on disk is slower in
I/O operations and access
than main memory like RAM!

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-47

3. Data confidentiality/auditability
 Cloud users face security threats both from outside and inside the
cloud. Many of the security issues involved in protecting clouds from
outside threats are similar to those already facing large data centers. In
the cloud, however, this responsibility is divided among potentially
many parties, including the cloud user, the cloud vendor, and any
third-party vendors that users rely on for security-sensitive software
or configurations. The cloud user is responsible for application-level
security. The cloud provider is responsible for physical security, and
likely for enforcing external firewall policies.
 The primary security mechanism in today’s clouds is virtualization. It
is a powerful defense, and protects against most attempts by users to
attack one another or the underlying cloud infrastructure. However,
not all resources are virtualized and not all virtualization
environments are bug-free

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 48

 Use of virtualization
 Virtualization does not lend itself to all situations. As an IT
professional you will need to know how to recognize
situations in which virtualization can be beneficial to an
organization.
 In addition to the areas already mentioned, the most common
areas in which virtualization can be readily applied are:
 Application development and testing;
 Training;
 Help desk environments; &
 Others e.g., ERP Servers’ Virtualization

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-49

 Use of virtualization
Application Development and Testing:
 Virtualization allows software development to run multiple VMs
rather than multiple physical machines.
 When developing and testing an application, the developer might
need a network of machines: a database server, a transaction
server, and a client. Virtualization could be used to run this
network on one physical machine.
 By using rapid provisioning, the developer can quickly and
economically create the necessary network infrastructure.
 The developer can repeatedly test the software inside of VMs with
the ability to quickly return to a clean, known state after teach test.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-50

 Use of virtualization
Training:
 Virtual machines are great tools for implementing training and learning.
 Training employees about new OSs and computer applications involves
extensive amounts of time and hardware.
 In many training environments, the trainees will be changing the system
configuration. What happens if they do something accidentally wrong?
You don’t want this happening on the physical system.
 Virtualization can reduce the amount of hardware needed for the
necessary training environments.
 Allows for almost instant restoration of the training environment by using undo
disks and differencing disks to discard changes made by a trainee.
 Multiple VMs allow for different learning environments to be running
simultaneously on the same hardware.

ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-51

 Use of virtualization
Help Desks:
 Help desks must support several varieties of hardware and software
configurations. The combinations of multiple Windows versions and various
applications becomes unwieldy.

 Help desk personnel must maintain multiple computers or restart their

computers to support people who use various configurations. They might not
even have access to a configuration that a customer is using, and so they must
guess or fly blind with their assistance. Customer satisfaction can suffer under
these scenarios.

 Using virtualization, help desks are better able to duplicate users ’

environments, including the OS and applications. For example, help desk
personnel using Windows 10 can support previous Windows OS by simply
starting a prebuilt VM from a saved state, which takes only seconds.

 Help-desk can also use remote desktop virtualisation access for quick IT
support without the need to travel physically to the client.
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-52
Outline
1. Introduction to Virtualisation
2. Virtualisation Mechanisms
3. Types of Virtualisation
4. Business Analysis of Virtualisation
5. Conclusion

Q&A
ICA II - GUC - Dr. Ayman Alserafi 5-53
 THANK YOU FOR
YOUR ATTENTION
NEXT WEEK: Middleware
Overview and Components

NEXT TUTORIAL: Virtualisation

+ Case Study