Week 10 - Virtualization

I remember back when I was in middle school, I used my iPad to complete work. However, there would be instances in which it would be difficult to access certain programs or use tools that were quite easy to use for desktops. Instances like needing to download and submit Word document files were a common occurrence. In order to accomplish this, we used VMware. VMware is a Virtualization software. What exactly is Virtualization?

Virtualization is essentially taking the physical hardware resources of a computer and allowing those resources to create separate software environments from said computer hardware. As an example, if you have a desktop computer that is functioning, you can set up virtualization to have that computer running 2 different software instances.

Virtualization happens due to the hypervisor, which handles the input and the output of the operating system and its hardware. The hypervisor allows for hardware changes to occur under the environment. Although virtualization has the benefits of allowing multiple environments meaning more productivity, it has its drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks is that it is having to pull hardware resources from the original computer, which can be pretty taxing depending on the system resulting in slower performance.