Hypervisor choose one: Which is better for you?

Hypervisor and hypervisor workloads have led to a significant increase in the utilization of hardware by enterprises.

When companies realized that the utilization of existing physical servers was less than 15%, they began to gradually increase the utilization of the original physical servers to more than 80% through the server virtualization management program.

By running 10, 20, 30 or even more virtual machines on a single physical machine, and supporting multiple loads at the same time, the utilization of the server can be greatly improved, which is also in line with the current trend of green data centers. The core part of this magic technology is just a small piece of code called "hypervisor", which enables physical resources to support multiple virtual machines running simultaneously, thus implementing CPU core, memory, and between multiple operating system instances. Sharing of network cards and storage resources. The operating system can be 32-bit or 64-bit Windows or Linux compatible with the X86 platform.

Maximizing the Benefits of the Hypervisor

The hypervisor supports running workloads within a virtual machine without changing the location of the traditional service network used to support the business system. Since virtual machines can provide services in exactly the same way as traditional physical machines, IT professionals will not have any changes to the management of the workloads they run on.

But the way you manage physical servers has changed. In the new operating mode, the server hardware is downgraded to the same level as other hardware devices such as routers, switches, and storage. The server becomes part of the resource pool and can be aggregated into a highly available cluster system to ensure that the client-facing services supported by the virtual machine are always online.

To ensure that you get the most out of virtualization, you need to choose the right hypervisor. There are a variety of hypervisor products available from different vendors in the market. Before deciding, you need to consider the following factors to determine which product is best suited to your existing organizational structure.

Type 1 vs. Type 2 hypervisor

There are two different hypervisor camps on the market: Type 1 (bare metal) hypervisor runs directly on the hardware system; Type 2 (semi-virtualization) The hypervisor runs as one of the existing operating system applications. The Type 1 hypervisor supports hardware-level virtualization, while the Type 2 hypervisor is software-level. Please refer to the virtualized hypervisor comparison below.

Hypervisor performance metrics comparison

Whether it is VMware, Microsoft or Citrix hardware virtualization hypervisor can achieve basic functions. The choice of which platform to best meet the needs we can refer to the comparison of performance indicators. These include aspects such as maximum CPU load, maximum supported host count and virtual machine memory, and support for virtual processors.

But the parameter selection cannot determine the user choice. Also need to pay attention to the type of operating system that each platform can support.

If the existing service network platform is heterogeneous, we must choose a hypervisor that can support all existing operating system types. If it's a single platform for Windows or Linux, it's enough to choose a manager that meets your needs.

Other criteria for hypervisor selection

User choices may be affected by other factors. For example, some companies choose VMware simply because it is the most popular hardware virtualization platform on the market.

Other reasons why users choose Microsoft Hyper-V are simply because of the existing Windows platform, or because it is free. Perhaps some users are interested in Citrix's claim that XenServer is a powerful hardware virtualization platform or a XenApp product that used Citrix. Of course, there are some users who think that these three major manufacturers are unable to meet the demand and choose some relatively unknown products.

Finally, the user's choice may consist of multiple complex factors. Although the various hypervisors are not identical, the basic functions are similar. Understanding the characteristics of each platform and the sub-operating systems that can be supported is the most basic part of the process of deciding a hardware virtualization platform. Whether it can meet the business needs of the enterprise is the core factor in making choices. (文/Danielle Ruest and Nelson Ruest )