Benefits and uses of virtualization

A few years ago, when computer users were not that abundant like today PCs were considered pretty abstract things. Imagine you come from the world of typewriters, radio, TV and someone tells you about operating systems, programs, execution, RAM, ROM, the all mighty mouse and so on. You will be confused at first trying to understand what’s all about. That’s not the case anymore today, but it’s the case with other abstract technologies like Virtualization, a technology which does the abstraction of available hardware resources on a computer, making possible for multiple operating systems to share simultaneously the same resources.

Essence of Virtualization

Are you confused? I was too at first, so let’s see what Virtualization really is by explaining what you can do with it. So, you have your computer, with Windows installed (it can be pretty much any other OS). Windows in this case is called host OS. You need to download a Virtual Machine software that will make the hardware available to other operating systems. I chose VirtualBox from SUN, a free Virtual Machine available for Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris and OpenBSD.

Installing Ubuntu on VirtualBox

Next you have to choose one or more host OS-es that will be installed on top of your host Windows installation. I gave a try on Ubuntu. Made a Virtual Machine in VirtualBox (it’s an easy to follow wizard). Pun the CD in drive, and told VirtualBox to boot from it, then went on to install Ubuntu on the previously created Virtual Machine.

Ubuntu runs just fine in windowed mode

After install you open VirtualBox and boot up the guest OS, Ubuntu in this case, and use it like a normal OS install (minus the fact that you have a combination of keys to switch the mouse focus from one OS to another). You can run it in windowed mode, or full screen if that’s what you want). That’s it, it can’t gen any easier that that, so let’s see what’s the use of virtualization.

Uses of Virtualization

• You can install as many guest OS-es as you like without having to worry about the host OS being damaged
• You can test any software, if you’re a software developer, using just one computer
• You can limit the resources of a Virtual Machine to see how it performs in various scenarios, or just for security reasons
• Virtualization helps also when older software have to run on newer OS-es which are not compatible with them

Have you tried virtualization? Or you’re afraid of it. Anyway, feel free to ask me questions. I’m happy to help if you have issues or got stuck at one point.