Articles about Virtualization

The Linux Foundation has released details of one of its open source projects, ACRN -- a hypervisor designed for the Internet of Things and embedded devices. And, yes, it is pronounced "acorn".

The project was helped by contributions of code and engineering from Intel, and the aim was to create a system for managing virtual machines that was both flexible and small. With a Linux-based service OS, ACRN can run multiple guest operating systems at the same time, making it ideal for many scenarios.

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Parallels IP Holdings GmbH has released Parallels Desktop 13, a major new release of its popular Mac virtualization tool.

Parallels Desktop, which allows macOS users to run virtual versions of Windows, macOS and Linux, is fully compatible with the forthcoming releases of Windows 10 Fall Update and macOS High Sierra (10.13). It also adds several new features and promises significant performance improvement in key areas.

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Delivering virtual applications and virtual desktop infrastructure can be a complex and expensive business.

Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) has been a leader in application delivery for some time and is using this week's Microsoft Inspire  conference to launch its latest update.

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VMWare is finally going to release its security solution for virtual machines, and according to the company's senior VP, it could be released in the third quarter of this year.

Speaking at a global roadshow in Melbourne, Australia, Jeff Jennings said the product (which will probably be called App Defense) will be looking at the "context of a virtual machine."

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IBM and Cisco recently announced a new partnership that would see both companies work together to bolster their respective cyber security offerings.

Now the two companies have decided to overhaul their shared VersaStack to include new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and hybrid cloud capabilities.

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The technology industry is full of jargon and buzzwords, which, if you’re not in the club, can often feel like a foreign language. When it comes to communicating new technologies and processes to other parts of the business, IT professionals need to be careful when translating these buzzwords into human-speak if they want to avoid a confused, blank look. It’s this confusion that results in a data breach, shadow IT activity, or missing out on investment in new IT equipment.

Whether it’s to educate yourself or others, we’ve de-coded the buzzwords. Now the next time someone asks you "what the blockchain you’re on about," rather than giving them SaaS, you can breakdown the meaning, benefit, and importance.

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Genymobile, the company behind the Android emulator Genymotion, has announced a new cloud-based virtualization platform aimed at Android developers. Running on Amazon Web Services, Genymotion On Demand offers access to the full Android operating environment online.

Billed by the hour, Genymotion On Demand gives enterprise devs the opportunity to try out apps in the cloud and extend existing services into the cloud. With no contract, the service offers an affordable entry point into virtual Android devices.

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For UK companies with at least 1,000 PCs, virtualization is a "strategic priority", however, they are yet unprepared for all the different security challenges this approach brings. This is according to a new report by Bitdefender.

Surveying 153 IT decision makers in the UK, working in such companies, the report says hybrid infrastructures are the major common architecture in enterprise environments, as CIOs all over the world being to increasingly adopt them. The report sheds some light on the biggest fears and concerns IT decision makers have with the new infrastructure approach.

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We’re seeing more and more technology functions being virtualized in order to streamline operations and cut costs. Networking is no exception to this trend, though it has been slower to adopt it than some other areas, there are good reasons for this which we’ll look at later. A shift is beginning to occur though.

Network function virtualization allows network tasks to be performed by software running on commodity hardware, replacing expensive, dedicated hardware appliances. This promises easy scaling of functions and should help in the automation of service delivery.

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Providing an open source platform for cloud computing, OpenStack allows the use of multi-vendor commodity hardware in a data center to process and store data, and deliver networking resources. It’s managed through a dashboard or an API and is used by many major companies around the world to manage their IT infrastructure.

OpenStack grew out of a joint project between NASA and Rackspace Hosting and launched in 2010. It’s currently managed by the not-for-profit OpenStack Foundation created in 2012. More than 500 companies are now members of the OpenStack project. OpenStack has a six-month release cycle with each release planned at a design summit. The software is modular with components focusing on different services.

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Just as in shipping physical cargoes where a load in a container can share transport on a train or ship with other similar loads while remaining separate, so in computing a containerized application is able to share machine space with many others whilst remaining separate in its own "box".

You might be wondering how this differs from full virtualization? A virtual machine provides a complete environment running an operating system and applications totally separate from the OS of the host server. A containerized application on the other hand is fully self-contained in terms of a business application, but is designed to work with the operating system kernel of the host. This provides a lighter weight alternative to full virtualization, allowing the application to be run on any physical machine that shares the same operating system, but otherwise behaving as though it’s independent.

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The first anniversary of the launch of Windows 10 was marked by Microsoft revealing that the operating system enjoyed one of the fastest adoption rates in the history of Windows. The software giant announced that over 300 million devices are now using Windows 10. Adoption rates for its latest operating system are 145 percent higher than for Windows 7 and 400 percent better than for Windows 8.

But however popular Windows 10 might be in terms of user adoption, it still brings a lot of the baggage of its predecessors for IT professionals to deal with, including painful migrations, time-consuming end-point management and patches. Even with improvements to minimize these issues, Windows 10 can still cause headaches as IT administrators attempt to migrate their endpoint devices without negatively affecting their users.

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The first question that businesses are likely to ask when considering virtualization is: what exactly is it? In IT terms, hardware virtualization refers to the act of using virtual, rather than physical computer resources. Practically speaking, this means that there is an abstraction layer between the physical hardware and the IT resources that the business consumes. For example, virtualization software will enable a single, physical machine to deliver multiple workloads simultaneously, with each workload only accessing the specific physical resources that are allocated to it.

In its most simple form, virtualization may refer to the partition of a hard drive, as this makes a single, physical storage device behave as if it is two hard drives. However, IT virtualization examples also come in much more complex forms. The core concept to remember is that to the end user, virtualization makes it appear as though they are accessing a single IT component or resource, regardless of the underlying hardware. Virtualization enables businesses to consolidate IT resources, such as network, CPUs, memory and storage and provision them as they see fit, usually via a network connection.

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Pretty soon it will be common for high-end smartphones to have as much -- if not more -- RAM than your PC, as Samsung just unveiled a new 8GB LPDDR4 module for mobile devices featuring large, UHD displays.

Samsung believes that mobile devices equipped with 8GB of RAM will be able to handle 4K video playback with ease but also virtual machines. The latter scenario is not a common on smartphones and tablets, but Samsung wants to bring mobile devices on a similar level to desktops and laptops, at least in consumers' minds.

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Considering it only came into existence in 2013, Docker has experienced a monumental rise in both the consumer and business markets. From such humble beginnings, (the earliest version of the technology was developed by founder Solomon Hykes in his mother’s basement), Docker has managed to secure a number of high-profile partners and in 2015 received a valuation in excess of $1 billion. But what exactly is Docker?

According to the company itself, "Docker allows you to package an application with all of its dependencies into a standardized unit for software development". The way in which Docker does this is through a software feature known as a container.

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