Clouds Are Like Onions

Which of course are like Ogres. They’re big, chaotic, and have lots of layers of virtualization

In discussions involving cloud it is often the case that someone will remind you that “virtualization” is not required to build a cloud.

But that’s only partially true, as some layers of virtualization are, in fact, required to build out a cloud computing environment. It’s only “operating system” virtualization that is not required.

Problem is unlike the term “cloud”, “virtualization” has come to be associated with a single, specific kind of virtualization; specifically, it’s almost exclusively used to refer to operating system virtualization, a la Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix. But many kinds of virtualization have existed for much longer than operating system virtualization, and many of them are used extensively in data centers both traditional and cloud-based.
Like ogres, the chaotic nature of a dynamic data based on these types of virtualization can be difficult to manage.


Layer upon layer of virtualization within the data center, like the many layers of an onion, are enough to make you cry at the thought of how to control that volatility without sacrificing the flexibility and scalability introduced by the technologies. You can’t get rid of them, however, as some of these types of virtualization are absolutely necessary to the successful implementation of cloud computing. All of them complicate management and make more difficult the task of understanding how data gets from point A to point B within a cloud computing environment.
 

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EIGHT KINDS OF VIRTUALIZATION

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Yes, that’s right, eight kinds of virtualization exist though we tend to focus on just the one, operating system virtualization. Some may or may not be leveraged in a cloud computing environment, but at least four of them are almost always found in all data center environments.

1. Operating System Virtualization is what we tend to think of when we simply say “virtualization.” This is the virtualization of compute resources, the slicing and dicing of a single physical machine into multiple “virtual” machines typically used today to deploy several different applications (or clones of a single application) on the same physical hardware.
2. Network Virtualization is likely one kind of virtualization many don’t even consider virtualization, but it is and it’s even got standards that help ensure consistency across implementations. The VLAN (Virtual LAN) has existed since the early days of networking and is used in cloud computing environments to isolate customer data. VLANs essentially create a virtual network overlay atop an existing physical network, slicing and dicing the physical connections into multiple virtual (and hopefully smaller) networks that can be configured to provide security and network-layer functions like quality of service and rate shaping peculiar to the applications and users that are directed over the VLAN. VLAN tagging, used to identity traffic as “belonging” to a specific virtual network, is defined by IEEE 802.1q.
   
   Also a form of network virtualization is trunking or link aggregation as defined by IEEE 802.1ad. Trunking aggregates multiple physical ports on a switching device and makes them appear as one logical (virtual) link, providing additional bandwidth to high volume networks as well as load balancing traffic across the physical interconnects in order to maintain consistent network performance. Interestingly enough, VLANs are almost always used when trunking is used in a network.
   
   And of course there is NAT (Network Address Translation), which is also a form of network virtualization. Because of the dearth of IP addresses, most users internal to an organization are directed through a pool of one or more public IP addresses (routable, i.e. accessible by people across the Internet) to access resources external to the organization. The virtualization here again makes many IP addresses (internal, non-routable, private) appear to be one or a small number of IP addresses (public, routable, external). This process is also used on inbound connections, making one or a small number of external, public IP addresses appear to represent multiple, internal, private IP addresses.
3. Application Server Virtualization occurs when a Load balancer, application delivery controller, or other proxy-based application network device “virtualizes” one or more instances of an application. The process of virtualization an application server makes multiple servers appear to be one ginormous server to clients, and acts in a manner very similar to trunking in that this form of virtualization is about aggregation. When applied to application servers, this virtualization focuses on the aggregation of compute resources.
   
   This form of virtualization is almost always necessary in a data center, whether traditional or cloud-based. Application server virtualization is the foundation on which failover (reliability) and scalability are based, and one would be hard-pressed to find a modern data center in which this form of virtualization – whether provided by software or hardware – is not already implemented.
4. Storage Virtualization is another form of aggregation-based virtualization. Storage virtualization aggregates multiple sources of storage such as NAS (network attached storage) devices and NFS/CIFS shares hosted on various servers around the data center and “normalizes” them into a single, consistent interface such that users are isolated from the actual implementation and see only the “virtual” namespaces presented by the storage virtualization device.

There are four other “types” of virtualization, but it is these four that are primarily utilized today and with which most folks are already familiar – it just may be that they are using different terminology. Perhaps that’s because virtualization of the network and application server have existed for so long most people do not associate it with virtualization. All four of these kinds of virtualization end up forming layers of abstraction throughout the network, and like operating system virtualization introduce management and architectural challenges that are increasingly difficult to address as environments become more and more dynamic, a la a cloud computing environment.

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