Growing up in Karachi, I remember coming across various hoardings plastered across walls, poles and buildings. One particular advertisement which always caught my attention was that of a virtual school. Yes, that’s what it was and being a kid, I used to think what kind of an educational institute would it be? Will students be learning sitting at their homes or will they be attending a lecture from a teacher on the other side of the world. I couldn’t figure out how that particular institution worked but it was my first encounter to the word ‘virtual’ and I derived its meaning to be something which is ‘remote’ or, in simple words, ‘not there’.
Growing up in Karachi, I remember coming across various hoardings plastered across walls, poles and buildings. One particular advertisement which always caught my attention was that of a virtual school. Yes, that’s what it was and being a kid, I used to think what kind of an educational institute would it be? Will students be learning sitting at their homes or will they be attending a lecture from a teacher on the other side of the world. I couldn’t figure out how that particular institution worked but it was my first encounter to the word ‘virtual’ and I derived its meaning to be something which is ‘remote’ or, in simple words, ‘not there’.
Fast forward to 2018, ‘Virtualization’ is the next best thing which can possibly happen to the human race. Thinking about the literal meaning of virtual education, the teacher is present in, let’s say Canada, and his lecture is being delivered to various parts of the world through a webinar. The single real physical source is the actual classroom where that teacher is physically present and the lecture being viewed by students in different parts of the world are all virtual sources. There is only one physical source, but the impact is huge as hundreds of students are reaping the benefits of it at their own convenience.
In technical terms, Virtualisation allows creation of multiple simulated (replicated) environments based on a single physical source. Companies such as Oracle and VMware are the leading ones in terms of server-grade virtualization.
Explaining virtualisation
With all the technical gibberish, the concept cannot be understood in one go. Therefore, think of the film The Matrix Reloaded which would perhaps be a top favorite of millions of people. In one scene, the protagonist Neo is surrounded by hundreds of clones of the bad guy Mr Anderson.
There was one real Mr Anderson divided into multiple ones who were all doing different things and not particularly limited to a single task. This is how virtualisation works when a physical source is used to create multiple artificial sources to do different tasks.
For those of you who are not a fan of The Matrix, we can simply think of virtualisation as growing a plant. The initial growth of a tree starts by planting a plant shoot or seeds. Watered and nurtured correctly, you will soon see that seed growing into a sprout with multiple leaves from a single shoot. The main source is the seed which is now extended to a plant with multiple branches and leaves. Again, it works like a ripple effect where an initial state expands, leaving a larger impact.
Virtualisation, our savior!
Now that we have understood the concept of virtualisation, we need to move on to how it actually benefits us. Such a development brings with it endless benefits as the physical server footprint can be consolidated and reduced, leading to savings in money, power resource, cooling, and space.
Now, instead of installing 1000 physical servers for 1000 applications, only 25 physical servers would need to be installed. Moreover, instead of having hundreds of physical servers, the data can be stored in virtual storage which serves as a great backup in case the physical servers are compromised.
Through a virtual operating system, users can test new configurations, software and run upgrades before the go-live on their main operating system. It makes a lot of room for error detection and testing for the ease of users. Since hardware is always underutilised, whether it is the server, storage or network, better utilisation can be made by decoupling the intelligence of traditional storage and network and putting all the functions in a hypervisor.
Virtualisation is changing the way we do business!
Organisations and businesses in this dynamic world face extreme challenges as they work towards improving operational efficiencies and generate more revenue.
In order to stay competitive, businesses are now coping with disruption of technology through transformative strategies which requires them to continuously evolve with time.
Companies in Pakistan conduct seminars for capacity building and in order to educate people about virtualisation. The fact remains that it has become critical to now explore opportunities to support new ideas and agile services at lower costs.
For instance, VMware is an industry-leading virtualisation technology that provides cloud computing and platform virtualisation software and services. It has produced all this by virtualising all three major components: servers, storage, and network. This eliminates the need to use expensive storage devices, having a definite life, which have to be replaced to get the latest features.
The target audience for this technology is major players in the market such as telecom companies as well as companies in the aviation, textile, and financial sector. Even though in Pakistan we are still taking baby steps towards technology, VMware licenses are now easily available and implemented here as well. A number of companies in Pakistan, such as Jaffer Business Systems Ltd., have been providing professional services for acquiring licenses in the field of virtualisation for many years and have success stories across the country. License providers are now coming up with the highest number of certified resources to help their customers plan, design and implement VMware based virtualisation, automation and network security solutions.
The writer is a communications practitioner
