Cloud Computing and virtualization

Paramee Masakorala
SLIIT Women In FOSS Community
3 min readAug 3, 2022

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Cloud Computing and Virtualization are two technologies that are closely connected and often work together to provide a variety of services. In this article, I will discuss these two technologies.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing is simply the delivery of computing services. It is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet (“Cloud”) with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a provider.

What is Virtualization?

Using virtualization software, you can run multiple operating systems and applications simultaneously on the same machine by separating computer environments from physical infrastructures. Simply it means the process of separating the software layer of a computer or server from the hardware layer of a computer or server.

How is Virtualization different from Cloud Computing?

The core technology that powers cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization is software that manipulates hardware, while cloud computing refers to a service that results from that manipulation. You can’t have cloud computing without virtualization. Much of the confusion about these terms arise because virtualization and cloud computing work together to provide different services.

Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Also, cloud computing and the various cloud services provided these days rely on cloud virtualization, which is one type of virtualization technology. Virtualization in a cloud environment offers various benefits.

1.Protection from system failures

No matter how careful you are about the technology you use, technology in general can sometimes be prone to system problems. One of the benefits of cloud computing virtualization is automatic backup across multiple devices. By storing your backup data via virtual cloud services or networks, you can easily access files from any device. This multi-layered approach prevents you from losing any files even if one system goes down at a time.

2.Firewall and security support

Through virtual firewalls made possible through computer virtualization, you can restrict access to your data at a much lower cost compared to traditional data protection methods. Virtualization gives you protection from many potential cybersecurity issues through a virtual switch that protects your data and applications from harmful malware, viruses, and other threats.

3.Increase efficiency and productivity

With fewer servers, your IT teams will be able to spend less time maintaining physical hardware and IT infrastructure. You’ll be able to install, update, and maintain the environment across all the VMs in the virtual environment on the server instead of going through the laborious and tedious process of applying the updates server-by-server. The effectiveness and productivity of your team increase when less time is spent on environment maintenance.

4.Reduce your IT expenses

When you virtualize an environment, that single physical server is transformed into many virtual machines. These virtual machines can have different operating systems and run different applications while they are all hosted on the same physical server. Integrating applications into virtualized environments is a more cost-effective approach because you can consume fewer physical consumers, which can help you spend significantly less money on servers and bring cost savings to your organization.

In addition to this, there are many other benefits such as hassle-free data transfers, easier IT management, better scalability, and flexibility.

Virtualization and cloud services are not end-all, be-all solutions. Things could always change, just like with any other technology or service. Today’s conversation about virtualization and cloud computing often leads to talk of “serverless computing,” which aims to eliminate end-user concerns about server maintenance, limitations, and scalability.

I hope this article will lead to your further knowledge.

Thank you for Reading !!!

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