Virtualization and Cloud Computing

The most recent solutions from Microsoft and VMWare incorporate Cloud principles into their virtualization solutions. This is a predictable move since one of the major features of Cloud solutions is their elasticity which is accomplished heavily through virtualization. Cloud Computing solutions provide sophisticated administration tools, as well as, service level monitoring tools. Consequently,for visionary companies like Microsoft and VMWare ,extending these tools to their virtualization offerings is expectable. Additionally, VMWare extended its product to allow On-Premises installation, allowing customers to mitigate most of their security issues raised by an Off-Premises Cloud solution. Microsoft´s position on this isn´t yet clear.

The following diagram shows the architecture of Microsoft and VMWare solutions:

 

Microsoft´s solution,  taking the company’s background in consideration, targets the developer community, providing an integrated PaaS solution, including application services, database services, access control services, etc.

VMWare, on the other hand, relies on established partnerships to provide production ready application services through its Virtual Appliance Program.

The following diagram shows the use of VMWare´s solution on a Cloud environment:

 

The following diagram shows the use of Microsoft´s solution on a Cloud environment. Notice that Microsoft has not yet decided to provide an On-Premises Cloud solution, hence the grey cloud:

 

VMWare has a credible solution to implement DataCenter setups On-Premises. The downside of VMWare´s solution, is that it only provides an IaaS solution which is expectable from a company that dedicates itself to virtualization solutions. Nevertheless, VMWare has established several partnerships with various application software providers to deliver Virtual Appliances that provide application engines (e.g., WebSphere), database engines (e.g., ORACLE), etc. Microsoft´s Cloud solution is more complete, in the sense that, it provides a fully loaded PaaS solution.

 Since I have dedicated some entries on this blog to Microsoft´s Cloud Solution, I will now concentrate on VMWare´s solution. The evolution of VMWare´s offerings has gone from a pure virtualization solution to a virtual DataCenter solution, with sophisticated administration tools, to a Cloud IaaS oriented operating system.

 

With its vCloud solution, VMWare delivers a Cloud operating system for Cloud providers. Many of these companies have already implemented VMWare´s vCloud solution, and this is expected to continue. VMWare is also targeting On-Premises installations, and taking advantage of the fact that Microsoft hasn´t taken a stand on this kind of installation.