4.

EVALUATION
Overhead
Virtualization usually imposes little or no overhead, because programs in virtual partition use the operating system's normal system call interface and do not need to be subject to emulation or run in an intermediate virtual machine, as is the case with whole-system virtualizers (such as VMware andQEMU) or para-virtualizers (such as Xen and UML). It also does not require hardware assistance to perform efficiently.

Flexibility
Operating system-level virtualization is not as flexible as other virtualization approaches since it cannot host a guest operating system different from the host one, or a different guest kernel. For example, with Linux, different distributions are fine, but other OS such as Windows cannot be hosted. This limitation is partially overcome in Solaris Containers by its branded zones feature, which provides the ability to run an environment within a container that emulates a Linux 2.4-based release or an older Solaris release.

Storage
Some operating-system virtualizers provide file-level copy-on-write mechanisms. (Most commonly, a standard file system is shared between partitions, and partitions which change the files automatically create their own copies.) This is easier to back up, more space-efficient and simpler to cache than the block-level copy-on-write schemes common on whole-system virtualizers. Whole-system virtualizers, however, can work with non-native file systems and create and roll back snapshots of the entire system state.

Restrictions inside the container

The following actions are often prohibited: Modifying the running kernel by direct access and loading kernel modules. Mounting and dismounting file systems. Creating device nodes.

Accessing raw, divert, or routing sockets. Modifying kernel runtime parameters, such as most sysctl settings. Changing secure level-related file flags. Accessing network resources not associated with the container.

5. Conclusion and Future Work

Virtualization technologies have matured to the point where the technology is being deployed across a wide range of platforms and environments. The usage of virtualization has gone beyond increasing the utilization of infrastructure, to areas like data replication and data protection. This white paper looks at the continuing evolution of virtualization, its potential, some tips on optimizing virtualization as well as how to future proof the technology. After all, server virtualization's value is well-established. Many, many companies have migrated significant percentages of their servers to virtual machines hosted on larger servers, gaining benefits in hardware utilization, energy use, and data centre space. And those companies that haven't done so thus far are hatching plans to consolidate their servers in the future. These are all capital or infrastructure costs, though. What does server virtualization do for human coststhe IT operations piece of the puzzle? Base level server consolidation offers a few benefits for IT operations. It makes hardware maintenance much easier, since virtual machines can be moved to other physical servers when it's time to maintain or repair the original server. This moves hardware maintenance from a weekend and late night effort to a part of the regular business daycertainly a great convenience. The next step for most companies is to leverage the portability of virtual machines to achieve IT operational agility. Because virtual machines are captured in disk images, they are portable, no longer bound to an individual physical server. The ease of reproducing virtual images means that application capacity can be easily dialed up and down with the creation or tear down of additional virtual images. Server pooling allows virtual machines to be automatically migrated according to application load. More sophisticated virtualization uses include high availability, where virtual machines can be movedautomatically, by the virtualization management software itself & mdash: when hardware failures occur. Seeing the magic of a virtual machine automatically being brought up on a new server after its original host is brought down, all without any human intervention vividly demonstrates the power of more sophisticated virtualization use.

Certainly these kinds of uses of virtualization demonstrate its power to transform IT operations, enabling IT organizations to offer the kind of responsiveness and creativity that could only be dreamed of a few years ago. The deftness with which applications can be migrated, upsized, down sized, cloned, etc. is something that will forever change the way IT does its job.