Virtualization For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Managing a Virtualization Project

In This Chapter

• Getting an overview of the virtualization life cycle

• Planning your virtualization project

• Implementing your virtualization project

• Operating your virtualization infrastructure

In earlier chapters of this book, I dutifully go over all the broad, conceptual issues — what virtualization is, how it works, the business case for virtualization, and what technologies and applications of virtualization are actually available. Now it's time to get cracking, put the pedal to the metal, get a move on, hammer down, [insert appropriate cliché], and go do some virtualizing.

It's the classic move from Understanding to Doing. In this chapter, I bring together all of the different topics I've been harping on and wrap them up with a pretty bow. In practical terms, that means giving you the info you need so that you can choose which virtualization technology will work best for you. Your choices — if you need a reminder — are

• Operating system virtualization: By providing an emulation of a complete operating system, this form of virtualization offers an excellent opportunity to partition applications into their own containers (that is, applications are presented with a virtual operating system that reflects the underlying operating system).

• Hardware emulation: By emulating the underlying machine, hardware emulation enables organizations to mix and match operating systems and application versions, thereby achieving great flexibility in virtualization ...