Considering between virtualization and cloud, which is best?

Cloud or virtualization, which is right for my business? These questions always parts of consideration while adopting a solution form them. Even though many IT Managers or CIO are a little skeptical about the difference between both, because Cloud is more like Virtualization’s extended version. But if you have 100% virtualized infrastructure it doesn’t mean that you are having a Private Cloud infrastructure. Both technologies are almost similar and not interchangeable. But, the significant difference between both can affect your business decision.
Virtualization vs Cloud:
What is Virtualization?
Virtualization is a layer to create different and dedicated resources on the same physical infrastructure. Through virtualization you can run multiple software applications and operating systems at the same time on same hardware. You require a hypervisor above the physical infrastructure to create, run and manage different Virtual Machines. You can configure each VM as per your requirement of application, OS, environment, physical resources etc. There are many big players that provide hypervisor like VMware, Microsoft, Oracle, HP etc.
Virtualization makes servers, storage, workstations and other systems independent from physical infrastructure. Virtualization is the core fundamental that powers the cloud computing.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud the buzzword which gives more flexibility of computing in other words you can call Cloud Computing as “a type of Internet-based computing”. But also require hardware, software, hypervisor etc. while building.
So, how’s virtualization different from cloud?
Virtualization is the base of cloud computing and helps to deliver the value for cloud computing. Biggest confusion occurs when virtualization and cloud work together to provide different services, mostly the case in Private Cloud infrastructure.

Through virtualization you can enable the Cloud Computing if you are offering 100% virtualization infrastructure with:

  • On demand services
  • Broad network access
  • Resource pooling
  • Rapid elasticity
  • Pay-per-use model

With all these 5 elements and 100% virtualization your organisation achieve the Private Cloud infrastructure. Some of the expert companies also mentions that cloud computing can also achieve without virtualization with the help of certain hardware, operating system and even application cluster can offer cloud services but those are quite complicated and costly. Even though require a lot of time consuming work just for limited set of features.

How do you know if your business needs Virtualization Model or Cloud Model?
With virtualization companies can maintain and secure their infrastructure because of following benefits:
  • Maximize resources:
    Virtualization saves a lot of hardware resources and you can get more value from a single server. Maximum time with traditional way of computing most of the servers are under-utilised but with virtualization allows to use the 100% power of them.

  • Multiple systems:
    Virtualization enables you to create different VMs to run multiple types of applications and multiple operating systems for those applications on the same physical hardware.

  • IT budget integration:
    With virtualization administration and maintenance of resources is easy for your infrastructure and saves a lot for IT operations.

So companies that need greater control for integration and security & financially work more in capital expenditure model should adopt Virtualization model.

Whereas, those companies should adopt cloud, which work on operational expenditure model and have less IT staff and very few security concerns should. Cloud basically leverage you with:

  • Outsourced IT:
    The daily IT administration tasks, care or maintenance, and support system move away from the company to service provider. This will free up your internal IT resources and advances your business quickly.

  • Quick Setup:
    A startup that adopts cloud from start their work become easy as cloud services is quick and easy. Servers, appliances and application licenses go away when you such kind of service. Even though no need to take care of updates to do the compatibility. Every issue is now on the head of service provider.

  • Pay-per-use:
    All the SaaS (Software as a Service) based application available today with this model of paying of what you actually use. You can customize the services and pay the service provider of what and how much quantity you are using, no extra cost.

  • Scalability:
    By using cloud you have the facility to use it from anywhere and it off loads a whole big amount of IT capacity to the service provider. This increases the scalability of your working environment.

What’s new in Hyper-V Generation – 2 VMs?

Microsoft launched Generation 2 VMs with Windows Server 2012 R2 but they are still compatible with Generation 1 VMs which likely called as ‘legacy VMs’. Generation 1 VMs are the normal VMs running on Hyper –V which uses BIOS-based boot architecture, whereas Generation 2 VMs use UEFI-boot based architecture and available only on Windows Server 2012 R2.

Generation 2 VMs provide a simple hardware model, supports UEFI firmware & many of the legacy devices have also removed. In Generation 1 VMs same virtual hardware was assigned, whereas Generation 2 will be having new functionalities which are:


  • PXE boot via standard network adapter:
    In generation 1 if there was a requirement to have remote installation for the guest operating system using PXE (Pre-boot execution Environment), the legacy network adapter was supposed to install. In generation 2 legacy network aren’t available so PXE boot can only be performed by the standard network adapter.
  • Boot from SCSI Virtual Hard Disk or DVD:
    In Generation 2, VMs are enabled to boot from virtual SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) controller. Virtual IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) controllers aren’t available in Generation 2 VMs. So, attached OS VHDX can be benefited by having SCSI or VHDX features.
  • Secure Boot is enabled by default:
    Generation 2 VMs have Secure Boot by default in nature which help in preventing unauthorised firmware, operating systems and UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) drivers from running at the boot time. But Secure Boot can be disabled after creating the Virtual Machine.

The minimum requirements for the Generation 2 VMs are: Windows Server 2012 or R2 and 64 bit Windows 8 & 8.1.

On Microsoft Hyper-V an Admin can run both generations of VMs even though now Hyper-V will ask first which generation you want to create. Basically Hyper-V Generation 2 doesn’t support all Hyper-V supported guest Operating Systems. So, the Operating System, which isn’t compatible to Generation 2 those need to be installed on Generation 1 VMs.

When it comes to performance VMs boot will be 20% (approx.) faster & OS installation will be around 50% faster in comparison to Generation 1 VMs. But there will be not much difference in overall performance for VMs. 

Benefits:
There are benefits that Generation 2 VMs provide such as these VMs performs faster OS installation because OS installation enables from PXE network. Another advantage is, these VMs boots faster and a subset of Integration components is available to the VM during power-on.

Limitations:

Limitations are also there with Generation 2 VMs as they only support VHDX virtual hard-drive format. Generation 1 VMs can convert to a VHDX format to use in the Generation 2 but then you cannot further convert it to some other format. All OSs aren’t supported by Generation 2 VMs, you can’t install old version of OSs in them. There are a lot more drawbacks and limitations associated with Generation 2 VMs

  • Only new OSs are supported on Gen 2 VMs. 
  • No boot from an iSCSI LUN if you need to then use Gen 1 VMs only. 
  • The secure boot option is only with Gen 2 VMs. 
  • No support for the legacy network Adapters. 
  • No support for vFloppyDrives. 
  • No support for IDE Controllers
May be in the next release of Hyper-V we might not see these limitations or drawbacks in the Gen 2 VMs