The all-pervasive virtualization

Today's IT systems have to meet an increasing number of seemingly contradictory requirements: they have to guarantee speed, ease of access, efficiency, reliability and continuity, with ever smaller budgets and ever higher levels of security. Microsoft's core platform is stable, scalable, feature-rich and designed for corporate use, ensuring that all these requirements are compatible and can be fulfilled together.

It is worth bearing in mind that virtualization technologies can be used to separate physical and virtual systems, but instead of managing two separate systems, you still only need to manage one. The physical servers, the operating systems running on them virtually and the applications installed on them can be efficiently served by a single management infrastructure, which is a key factor in ensuring low TCO.

An issue that goes hand in hand with the use of virtualization technologies is licensing, which needs to be addressed regardless of the hypervisor vendor. Microsoft's licensing policy is not related to the Hypervisor, so even if you are using non-Microsoft vitrualization code, you still need to re-calculate the Microsoft server licenses. The right to run virtual machines is also built into the Windows Server licensing structure, which can provide significant savings.

Virtualization as a key element of IT systems

An important element of an infrastructure based on virtualization solutions is undoubtedly the Hypervisor, which provides allocated resources for virtual machines. However, the virtualization code alone is not sufficient, as remote management requires OS system components to monitor virtual machines, manage entitlements and enforce security settings. The view that with the advent of the Hypervisor there is no longer any need for an operating system is not valid.

Monolithic vs. microkernel Hypervisor

The virtualization industry initially saw the emergence of multiple solutions, but the business demands of companies have clearly driven vendors in one direction. Modern server virtualization solutions in use today follow the so-called Type-1 Hypervisor model, often referred to as Bare Metal virtualization. This category can be further broken down into two levels: monolithic and microkernel Hypervisor solutions. Microsoft has chosen microkernel virtualization (Microsoft's Type-1 Hypervisor is called Hyper-V) because it does not require any external vendor code to be installed in the hypervisor, and therefore offers a wider range of hardware support than the monolithic version. All drivers required for the physical hardware must be installed in the operating system running in the parent partition - only code verified and signed by Microsoft can be installed here, ensuring that the parent operating system runs reliably and stably. Virtual machines see all devices, except processor and memory, emulated or synthetic.