Why Virtualize?
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
Is there a certification course?
Oddly, no. But really, virtualization is so basic that it's a few minutes of learning. It's just an abstraction layer.
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
why Is it required for most/all IT Jobs That I've seen?
Because no production workload should ever be contemplated to be run any other way... to the point that not doing so could easily qualify as professional negligence in most cases and one could easily define anything not virtualized as not being eligible for production classification.
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
okay.. How does it work?
A complete computer is created in software so that your operating system is deployed into a software container rather than to the bare hardware. There are many ways to accomplish this. But at a high level, it's just software that creates a literal "virtual machine" so that software deployed to it thinks that it is running on hardware, but it is actually just software.
This gives you a layer of abstraction so that you can work with the operating system without having to manipulate actual physical hardware. While this might sound complex, it actually reduces overall complexity and protects against lots of really common problems.
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
and in a regular set up you'd use this to run servers? controllers? back ups? Images?
Anything that isn't a desktop, and often even those.
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@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
So by Virtualizing you're spreading out the resources to different OS's ?
No, that's a common myth. Virtualization implies nothing like that. It can help to enable that, but that is just one of many, many possible things that it can be used to do.
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@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@WrCombs said in Why Virtualize?:
Is there a certification course?
It is very important to have a basic understanding virtualization because damn near everything is virtualized these days. Once you have a basic understanding, you would be better off learning Cloud technologies. It is virtualization on steriods.
Even things you don't think about. Like XBOX 360 runs virtualization. Every VPS provider is virtualized. Cloud computing is all virtualized. Every production anything anywhere is virtualized. Lots of desktops are virtualized. It's just... everywhere.
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@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
A VM is nothing more than a server running in a container instead of directly on the hardware it's running on.
You have to be careful with the container term as a VM and a container are technically different, but using container is a good term to help get the point across.
yeah - I know... containers came on the scene.. now we have to be extra careful in how we explain things...
In 1980, they came on the scene. It's been a while.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
A VM is nothing more than a server running in a container instead of directly on the hardware it's running on.
You have to be careful with the container term as a VM and a container are technically different, but using container is a good term to help get the point across.
yeah - I know... containers came on the scene.. now we have to be extra careful in how we explain things...
In 1980, they came on the scene. It's been a while.
See - even there I wasn't careful enough with how I was explaining it.
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@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
@Obsolesce said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
The simple answer to "why virtualize" is that if you don't, everyone here will make fun of you (ask me how I know).
It is difficult to have a valid reason to run a physical server anymore.
There's always a snowflake reason, but you should always virtualize unless you have super specific reasons not to.
When I first got my current job, those reasons were mostly "the boss says 1:1 physical systems". I later found out that like 10+ years ago they got SCREWED by a poorly implemented VM Ware setup for production systems. Cost them some customers and a bunch of money, so it kinda made sense. I've been working really hard to break them out of their late 90s mindset.
That doesn't really make sense. That's one piece of bad logic, and then the response to it was bad logic. What that shows is that they didn't learn from the bad decision making the first time, and responded illogically. It wasn't virtualization that screwed them, avoiding virtualization didn't protect them. It's not a 90s mindset, we started virtualizing anything we could in 1964. It's a bad mindset from any era, even in the 1990s we carefully evaluated virtualization through logic.
They should have learned to make sure that they were evaluating and implementing systems correctly. But instead of working on what burned them, they tried to cover it up by blaming a technology that couldn't possibly be the issue.
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@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
@Obsolesce exactly, plus the IT guy before me sucked, so I had a while before they really listened to my advice. We are about to roll out a physical SQL server, but I'm trying to get them to put hyper-v 1st and then just the 1 VM with all available resources to test the performance.
Sounds like they same trend. They didn't evaluate the decision making process from the old guy and instead of switching who they listened to (correct decision making) they decided to distrust all advice regardless of source (crazy.)
So very much more of the same as "someone screwed up" and instead of blaming the person who screwed up, they blamed the project that they did wrong and ignored the obvious facts.
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@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
@Obsolesce said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
The simple answer to "why virtualize" is that if you don't, everyone here will make fun of you (ask me how I know).
It is difficult to have a valid reason to run a physical server anymore.
There's always a snowflake reason, but you should always virtualize unless you have super specific reasons not to.
When I first got my current job, those reasons were mostly "the boss says 1:1 physical systems". I later found out that like 10+ years ago they got SCREWED by a poorly implemented VM Ware setup for production systems. Cost them some customers and a bunch of money, so it kinda made sense. I've been working really hard to break them out of their late 90s mindset.
Yeah - that fear is a real thing, definitely hard to get past. Sadly, frequently it takes those people leaving a company before things actually change.
Fear isn't the real problem. The fundamental problem is irrationality and no logical decision process. Companies that promote emotional decisions rather than careful evaluation encourage irrationality to dominate. Fear is a nature byproduct of irrationality. Once people have no idea how to use logic or to evaluate a decision, fear is a natural consequence. But it is irrationality that encourages fear, not fear that makes people irrational.
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@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
If it wasn't cheaper, it wouldn't have been used as much.
I always say to never use this..... because I can show lots of times that the acquisition cost was the same, but I've never been able to show a case where they shouldn't virtualize. Of course, at the end of the day, cost is the final motivation because all business decisions are about cost. But it's about the TCO over the system lifespan, not how much it costs to operate or acquire.
Thinking that it is about cost is what leads people to think that somehow doing physical for 1:1 deployments is okay, when that should always be virtualized, too.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
@Obsolesce said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
The simple answer to "why virtualize" is that if you don't, everyone here will make fun of you (ask me how I know).
It is difficult to have a valid reason to run a physical server anymore.
There's always a snowflake reason, but you should always virtualize unless you have super specific reasons not to.
When I first got my current job, those reasons were mostly "the boss says 1:1 physical systems". I later found out that like 10+ years ago they got SCREWED by a poorly implemented VM Ware setup for production systems. Cost them some customers and a bunch of money, so it kinda made sense. I've been working really hard to break them out of their late 90s mindset.
That doesn't really make sense. That's one piece of bad logic, and then the response to it was bad logic. What that shows is that they didn't learn from the bad decision making the first time, and responded illogically. It wasn't virtualization that screwed them, avoiding virtualization didn't protect them. It's not a 90s mindset, we started virtualizing anything we could in 1964. It's a bad mindset from any era, even in the 1990s we carefully evaluated virtualization through logic.
They should have learned to make sure that they were evaluating and implementing systems correctly. But instead of working on what burned them, they tried to cover it up by blaming a technology that couldn't possibly be the issue.
When led by those who don't know - this is the outcome. Those who don't know IT are leading IT, and you have this.
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@Dashrender said in Why Virtualize?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
@Obsolesce said in Why Virtualize?:
@IRJ said in Why Virtualize?:
@RojoLoco said in Why Virtualize?:
The simple answer to "why virtualize" is that if you don't, everyone here will make fun of you (ask me how I know).
It is difficult to have a valid reason to run a physical server anymore.
There's always a snowflake reason, but you should always virtualize unless you have super specific reasons not to.
When I first got my current job, those reasons were mostly "the boss says 1:1 physical systems". I later found out that like 10+ years ago they got SCREWED by a poorly implemented VM Ware setup for production systems. Cost them some customers and a bunch of money, so it kinda made sense. I've been working really hard to break them out of their late 90s mindset.
That doesn't really make sense. That's one piece of bad logic, and then the response to it was bad logic. What that shows is that they didn't learn from the bad decision making the first time, and responded illogically. It wasn't virtualization that screwed them, avoiding virtualization didn't protect them. It's not a 90s mindset, we started virtualizing anything we could in 1964. It's a bad mindset from any era, even in the 1990s we carefully evaluated virtualization through logic.
They should have learned to make sure that they were evaluating and implementing systems correctly. But instead of working on what burned them, they tried to cover it up by blaming a technology that couldn't possibly be the issue.
When led by those who don't know - this is the outcome. Those who don't know IT are leading IT, and you have this.
Not really. No matter how little you know about IT, this would never be the result of a logical manager. Not knowing about cars doesn't make you make bad car repair decisions, ever. If you are logical and a good manager, then not knowing about something stops you from ever making a technical decision about something you know you don't know about. The only thing that can result in this behaviour is bad decision making processes where someone isn't applying logic and reason, but instead emotion and irrationality (unless they do understand are trying to commit sabotage.)
This kind of problem can never arise from a lack of technical knowledge. It's a lack of management knowledge that has to do it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
If it wasn't cheaper, it wouldn't have been used as much.
I always say to never use this..... because I can show lots of times that the acquisition cost was the same, but I've never been able to show a case where they shouldn't virtualize. Of course, at the end of the day, cost is the final motivation because all business decisions are about cost. But it's about the TCO over the system lifespan, not how much it costs to operate or acquire.
Thinking that it is about cost is what leads people to think that somehow doing physical for 1:1 deployments is okay, when that should always be virtualized, too.
TCO is cost. Total cost should always be the cost to look at regardless.
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@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
@scottalanmiller said in Why Virtualize?:
@Pete-S said in Why Virtualize?:
If it wasn't cheaper, it wouldn't have been used as much.
I always say to never use this..... because I can show lots of times that the acquisition cost was the same, but I've never been able to show a case where they shouldn't virtualize. Of course, at the end of the day, cost is the final motivation because all business decisions are about cost. But it's about the TCO over the system lifespan, not how much it costs to operate or acquire.
Thinking that it is about cost is what leads people to think that somehow doing physical for 1:1 deployments is okay, when that should always be virtualized, too.
TCO is cost. Total cost should always be the cost to look at regardless.
That's true. It's just not what people think when people say cost. They leave out the bigger picture that includes overall risk over time. Almost no one evaluates the cost of risk into their TCO, even though it is one of the biggest cost factors.
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I'll add my two cents.
I use this analogy to explain it to my boss. Virtualization is kind of like an apartment building or hotel, where the building and utilities are all shared by the rooms. The building is the physical server and utilities are the resources (CPU, RAM, Storage, Network). The rooms are the VMs (guests).
One of the reasons you would virtualize is to get more bang for your buck out of the hardware, whose resources are often idle or severely under-utilized for the majority of the time. Like others have mentioned, you have savings on physical hardware, power, cooling, density (physical space for servers), etc.
Other reasons include
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Portability of VMs (guests), as they are just files. This extends life-span of the VM OS, as it can run on any hardware just by simply migrating it.
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Snapshots of VMs to roll back to a point in time. For instance, prior to installing updates or making other significant changes.
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Faster server provisioning (using templates).
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Just addressing the "why" here.
You have a software widget that requires 1/2 of a CPU core and 512MB RAM. Even the most basic server is going to have 10x the resources required to run said widget. Why would you want to pay to run all those resources to do only 1 widget when you can run 10?
There are also advantages to recovery when hardware does die. I think someone already mentioned here. Hardware dies, install hypervisor on new hardware, restore, done. No dealing with trying to add drivers and other silly things after the fact.
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@wrx7m said in Why Virtualize?:
Portability of VMs (guests), as they are just files.
With the exceptions of using LVM Thin volumes instead of files.
