How much has the status quo and future of virtualization technology changed?

In the past five years, server virtualization has evolved from a niche concept that is only the largest and most daring to an essential part of the day-to-day operations of data centers. However, virtualization technology has little impact on the software and operating systems we can virtualize. I think this situation needs to be changed.

It seems a bit strange to pay attention to this aspect. But keep in mind that the server infrastructure exists entirely to provide applications to end users. The process of providing an application typically involves configuring storage and network resources, deploying a general-purpose operating system, reconfiguring the operating system to accept applications, installing applications, and then configuring applications. Virtualization technology makes the first few steps of the process almost effortless, but it still takes a lot of effort to configure the operating system and application layer, which is almost completely unchanged. If you are looking for a field that is suitable for improvement, then it is none other than it.

It's not hard to imagine this environment: the general-purpose operating system is replaced by a much thinner, dedicated framework that exists entirely to run an application. I think this is where the future lies, but we don't expect this industry shift to happen overnight.

Instead, we are taking the first steps in this direction by taking advantage of the virtual appliance, which is a downloadable merged image of pre-configured operating systems and applications. Virtual devices are nothing new; however, the open source community used virtual devices primarily as an easy way to hand over software to users who might not be willing to spend time configuring unfamiliar operating systems or applications.

Whether it is due to licensing restrictions or the lack of interest of large commercial operating system developers, virtual devices have not penetrated into enterprise applications. Given the dominance of virtualization technology in the data center today, I don't see how this trend can continue.

Since it takes only a few minutes to configure resources for the infrastructure necessary to support the application, server administrators have no reason to spend most of the day using applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2007. Why not distribute virtual appliances to such applications and many enterprise applications like it? In that case, the only "installation" you need to do is to integrate the virtual appliance into your Active Directory domain, reconfigure the virtual appliance's storage and resource allocation to accept the user load you expect, and then customize the application for your enterprise. The configuration of the program. This way, you can achieve the same results as the underlying virtualization infrastructure of your application: saving time and money.

In fact, with VMware's vApp concept (which is a collection of multiple virtual machines, these virtual machines are treated as a single logical application environment), it is even possible to deploy directly from software developers. The entire multi-tier application does not require much installation work. Your organization's IT department can focus on where it should be: customize the application and actually process the data, rather than staring at the endless progress bar for hours. I can't imagine how many expensive IT people are spending each year staring at these identical installation progress bars.

You would think that large software developers would be keen on this because it gives them the opportunity to provide you with the convenience of a fully optimized installation of the application. Developers are free to let their applications have the best interface and performance, and reduce support costs by performing comprehensive quality assurance, ensuring the quality of operating systems and applications. This seems to me to be a win-win situation.

Looking ahead, I think operating systems and software developers will make some major changes to the licensing and distribution of software in order to take advantage of the benefits of running in a virtualized environment. With the application programming interface (API) and open standards support capabilities of several major hypervisors, many of the tools needed to do this are available, so there is no reason not to start. These changes, combined with more advanced security features, such as the intrusion prevention system (IPS) and anti-virus features found in the hypervisor stack, really make virtualization technology promising.