BleepingComputer.com: What Is "virtualization"?

Can anyone tell me, please?

Virtualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Wikipedia.org" said:

fozzie, on May 4 2007, 07:28 PM, said:

I understand that it is a broad term, the rest is incomprehensible to me, unfortunately. What's it for? What's it do? Am I likely to have it? Is it something you have to DO or is it just that some programs do it? What type of programs do it? Why?

[And Google is only a friend if you can understand the information you find.....]

This is defiantly advanced course stuff. The three main benefits of virtualization is resource management, uniformness and isolation. First you need to understand how an operating system works, before you can understand how virtualization changes how an operating system works.

Unless your a server administrator it isn't something you need to worry about, at least for a few years.

Mr Alpha, on May 4 2007, 11:04 PM, said:

I don't need to worry about it ever , except that it is banned in some versions of Vista and that seems contentious - I'm just trying to understand a bit of what I'm reading.

Quote

Well, there's understanding (you know enough not to embarrass yourself at parties), and there's understanding (you REALLY know what's happening). I used to understand the fundamentals, but the fundamentals aren't the same anymore

All of this stuff gives me a headache! But here's the "barebones" take on it that I have.

Virutalization involves creating a computer within the computer - that way the underpinnings can change - yet you can still have the same things running the same way on every computer around.

For example, I can run a program on my system in many different ways thanks to virutalization. I have several copies of different versions of Microsoft OS's running on my system at different times (DOS, WFW, 95, 98SE, 2000, XPPro, and Vista). This way I can run a program in DOS at the same time I run a program in WFW and XP.

Another benefit is the isolation - if the virtual machine dies it won't necessarily kill the actual OS.

Lot's and lot's more stuff to this, but that (to me) is the basics.

usasma, on May 5 2007, 10:43 PM, said:

Imagine what it does to me Thanks for the explanation - at least I (sort of ) now know what they were talking about.

One of the commentators in one of the articles said that people who have the basic and whatever-the-other-one-is-I-can't-remember of Vista wouldn't be doing virtualization anyway. It sounds like that is probably a fair comment. Do you need a high-end machine to do that?

You don't necessarily need a high end PC to run the software virtual solutions, like MS Virtual PC 2007, but you do need to be running supported versions of the OS. However, since you are sharing resources, such as RAM between the main OS and the virtual one(s), one should probably not try running this on a minimal PC. It appears the writer of that article is correct when discussing Vista - Basic and Premium will not run Virtual PC 2007.

Both AMD and Intel are allowing virtualization at the hardware level (click on links).

FWIW - I use Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista system.

It's good for:
- testing stuff on other OS's
- locating information that's different from OS to OS
- "sandboxing" things that I don't want affecting my system
- keeping the copy of the OS "pristine" - I can copy the virtual machine image to another location and I'll have the whole durned thing backed up.

There's different implementations of virtualization that may not be used in Vista - but that's beyond the scope of the "basics" (when discussing basics it's handy to remember that it's just a bunch of generalizations that hold true a good part of the time - and that there's plenty of exceptions that just don't hold true with the "basics")