Server Virtualization and Cloud Computing

This week, you have read about server virtualization and cloud computing in chapter 6 of your textbook. For your written assignment this week, complete a case study of the organization you work for (use a hypothetical or “other” organization if more applicable) that will address the following prompts:

• Describe the organization’s environment, and evaluate its preparedness for virtualization.
• Explain Microsoft (or another product) licensing for virtualized environments.
• Recommend a configuration for shared storage; make sure to discuss the need for high availability and redundancy for virtualization for the organization.
• Explain Windows Azure capabilities for virtual machines and managing a hybrid cloud, including Windows Azure’s Internet as a Service (IaaS) and storage capabilities

Make a recommendation for cloud computer use in the organization, including a justification for your recommendations.

Submit your midterm research paper as a single document. Your paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be approximately six pages in length (1600-1800 words), not including the required cover page and reference page.
• Follow APA7 guidelines. Your paper should include an introduction, a body with fully developed content, and a conclusion.
• Support your answers with the readings from the course and at least two scholarly journal articles to support your positions, claims, and observations, in addition to your textbook. The UC Library is a great place to find resources.
• Be clearly and well-written, concise, and logical, using excellent grammar and style techniques. You are being graded in part on the quality of your writing.

International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication Control and Networking (ICACCCN2018)

ISBN: 978-1-5386-4119-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 64

Virtualization in Cloud Computing- a Study
Manjeet Singh

Directorate of Education
Government of NCT of Delhi, India

E-Id: er.manjeet106@gmail.com

Abstract— The recent past have experienced tremendous
rise and popularity of technologies like cloud computing
and virtualization. Cloud computing is a construct that
allows us to access applications that actually reside at a
location other than your computer, most often, this will be
a distant data center. Many organizations have already
started implementing these technologies to further reduce
costs through improved resource utilization. Cloud
Computing and virtualization enable users to use
applications on internet and intranet. In Cloud computing
many of the services relies heavily on virtualized
hardware. Because of this, we carefully reviewed existing
virtual hardware services in order to both understand how
the process works and to find the service that is best suited
to Cloud computing and virtualization in different
situations.

Keywords—Cloud Computing; Virtualization; Virtual Machine;
Resource Utilisation; Data Center.

I. INTRODUCTION
In Cloud computing, virtualization is the basis of

delivering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that separates
data, network, applications and machines from hardware
constraints. Cloud computing is becoming popular among IT
businesses due to its agile,flexible and cost effective services
being offered at Software, Platform and In-frastructure level.
Software as a Service (SaaS) allows users to access
applications hosted by different vendors on Cloud via internet.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) enables developers to code, test
and deploy their applications on IaaS. In infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS) model, Cloud provider’s offer services such as
computing, network, storage and databases via internet. IaaS is
the base of all Cloud services with PaaS and SaaS both built
upon it. The primary features of IaaS are elasticity and
virtualization. Virtualization enables a single system to
concurrently run multiple isolated virtual machines (VMs),
operating systems or multiple instances of a single operating
system (OS) [1].

Cloud Suite relies heavily on virtualized hardware.
Because of this, we carefully reviewed existing virtual
hardware services in order to both understand how the process
works and to find the service that is best suited to Cloud Suite.

Virtualization is one of the oldest areas of interest in
computer science. One of the most successful examples of
virtualization is the Java Virtual Machine (J V M) [3]. Using
the J V M allows the Java programming language to produce
identical results regardless of the instruction set architecture

(ISA) that is used by the hardware platform. This is because,
for all intents and purposes, the compiled Java code is running
on the same machine hyphen albeit in a virtual setting. As
long as a system has a J V M installed that can translate Java
byte code into the appropriate ISA, then the results will be
identical.

The Java virtual machine allows one piece of virtual
hardware to be present on multiple discrete systems. Software
like V M Ware allows multiple virtual hardware systems to be
present on a single piece of physical hardware. Creating
multiple virtualized hardware images on a single piece of
physical hardware is one of the cornerstones of cloud
computing. These concurrent virtual images are made possible
by a hypervisor. Various types of virtualization exists such as
Client virtualization, Storage virtualization and Server
virtualization in cloud computing.

II. NEED, BENEFITS AND CONS OF VM MIGRATION
VM Migration is at the core of cloud computing. The

needs and benefits of virtualization are as follows [2]:

Multiple Systems: With virtualization we can run
multiple applications even on different operating
system on the same physical hardware.

Power Management: We can improve the power
utilization.

Improve Resource Utilization: The resource utilization
is increased with the virtualization.

Load Balancing: Load can be distributed on available
resources.

Maintenance and Servicing.

It improves system availability.

It is scalable, as per the requirement with time.

Security is provided by running multiple servers in
isolation.

The major hurdle with the virtualization is that the network
load during the migration increases which results in the
increase of communication cost. One side effect of this is that
performance of application running on virtual machine
degraded.

III. VIRTUAL MACHINE PLACEMENT TECHNIQUES
The various algorithms implemented earlier for VM

Placement in data centers are First Fit, Next Fit, Random Fit,

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65

Least full First, Most Full First, First Fit Decreasing (Single
Dimension), First Fit Decreasing Product, First Fit Decreasing
Sum, Dot Product, Minimizing Angle. First fit, next fit and
random fit algorithms are simple algorithms. These algorithms
do not consider the resource capacities needed for placing
virtual machine and not consider the resource consumptions in
physical machines. Least full first, most full first, first fit
decreasing (single dimension) algorithms are designed based
on CPU capacity. First fit decreasing product, first fit
decreasing sum and dot product algorithms are designed for
multi dimensional resources. In these algorithms,
physical/virtual machines’ resource volumes are calculated
using all resources capacities. In minimizing angle algorithm
all resources are involved directly for placing virtual
machines. In this algorithm different resource consumptions
are balanced so that physical machines are minimized. This
algorithm concentrates on balancing resources instead of
maximizing resource usage of physical machines in each
dimension. After all these Virtual Machine Placement
algorithms, Modification of the Best Fit Decreasing (BFD)
algorithm is implemented in cloud data centers for placement
of Virtual Machines.

IV. SOME MAJOR CLOUD AND VIRTUALIZATION
SERVICE PROVIDER

Google (Google App Engine)

Google App is great for all types of applications such as
Business, Consumer, Marketing, Mobile, and Website [4].

Easy to Build: By using the familiar development
tool it will allow the user to buildup and get started
app quickly

Easy to Scale: It can serve any number of users and
automatically responds to data traffic change.

Easy to Manage: Administer app through the
centralize app web console always actives and
works, can’t need software installation, server or
backup etc.

Easy to Storage: GAE advanced storage
infrastructure gives benefits to companies to store
and access their data

Highly Scalable.
Flexible Security and sharing.
Fast data access.
Reliable Storage Access.

Table 1: Comparison of service providers over various matrices

Google [4] Amazon [6] Microsoft [5]
Cloud

Provider Google App Engine Amazon EC2 Azure

Service
Mode PaaS /SaaS Provider PaaS/ SaaS Provider and IaaS PaaS/ SaaS Provider and IaaS

Develop
Support Web service

Web service;
Windows console application;

Virtual Instance
Virtual machine

Feature Easy to build; Easy to scale; Easy to manage, inexpensive.

Elastic; Completely Controlled;
Flexible; Designed for use with

other Amazon Web Services
Reliable; Secure; Easy to Start.

Always up. Always on; Open;
Unlimited servers. Unlimited

storage. Powerful Capabilities.

Compute
model[65]

Predefined application structure and
framework; programmer-provided
“handlers” written in Python, all

persistent state stored in MegaStore
(outside Python code);

Automatic scaling up and down of
computation and storage; network
and server failover; all consistent

with 3-tier Web app structure

x86 Instruction Set Architecture
(ISA) via Xeon VM; Computation

elasticity allows scalability, but
developer must build the machinery,

or third party VAR such as Right
Scale must provide it

Microsoft Common Language
Runtime (CLR) VM; common
intermediate form executed in

managed environment;
Machines are provisioned based

on declarative
descriptions (e.g. which “roles”

can be replicated); automatic load
balancing

Storage MegaStore/BigTable
DynamoDB;SimpleDB;Rel ational

Database Service (RDS);
ElastiCache

Azure storage service

Support
SQL Cloud SQL

–
SQL Azure

Availability 100% 99.97% 99.95%
Free Usage Limitation usage in 1 GAE unite Micro-Linux-instance 3 month for free

Table 1 shows comparison of these service providers over various matrices.

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Microsoft (Windows Azure)

Microsoft windows azure is an open cloud platform
which enable user to build deploy and manage applications
across global network of Microsoft datacenters. The user can
build applications by using any kind of language, tool or
framework.net, node.js, java, php, it give facility to its
customer that whatever language you want to install you can
install and use it [5].

Always up and always on: Microsoft window azure
claim that its deliver services 99.95% to its users and
enable its users to build and run highly available
application without focusing on its infrastructure.

Open: MWA is open source, it give facilities to its
customer for using any kind of language, framework,
or tool to build their applications.

Unlimited Server and Unlimited Storage: MWA
enable its customer to easily scale their applications
to any size. Window Azure is available on multiple
datacenters around the world, which enable its users
to deploy their application near to their customers.

Powerful Capabilities: MWA can deliver flexible
cloud computing platform which can assure any
application need. Its distributed caching and CDN
service allow user to minimize latency and deliver
great application performance anywhere in world [5].

Amazon EC2(aws.amazon.com)

Compute: Amazon is scale to meet user application
demands whether it’s one server or large cluster [6].

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
AEC is web service which provides resizable

compute capacity in cloud. Amazon EC2 web service
allows users to obtain and build up with minimal
friction. Amazon EC2 provides complete control to
their users for computing resources and let them run
on Amazons computing environment.

Networking: In networking Amazon customize and
control user network resources, both inside and
outside the cloud [6].

V. VIRTUAL LABS
Creating a cloud based ad hoc laboratory system, such as

Cloud Suite, requires a variety of different technologies. The
primary technology that is necessary for Cloud lab is hardware
virtualization. Fortunately there are numerous examples
available to us. We will perform an examination of hardware
virtualization services in general and a specific exploration of
the services offered by Amazon.com. In addition to
virtualization we will also explore: existing virtual lab
environments, templating systems, remote storage solutions,
and finally, A P Is and Frame Works [7].

i. Amazon.com Elastic Compute Cloud
On August 25, 2006, Jeff Bezos announced the limited

beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud [8], referred to as
Amazon E C 2. Amazon E C 2 is a service that allows users
to, essentially, rent computational resources on an as needed
basis. This type of service is made possible by using the Xen
hypervisor, Xen allows Amazon E C 2 to create Virtual

Private Servers as demand requires. These virtual servers
make use of operating systems that have been optimized for
paravirtualization. Once the end user has customized the
virtual machine to their liking they are then able to save it as
an Amazon Machine Image, or A M I.

An A M I is a system image that has been created to be
used with E C 2. Users may customize these A M Is with their
own software packages allowing an A M I to be tailored for
any task. The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S 3) [9] is
used extensively in the code written for Cloud Suite. S 3
allows a user to upload and download files using H T T P
requests. Amazon Simple Storage Service, like the rest of
Amazon Web Services, is not free semicolon however at the
time of writing, Amazon offers a free tier of service available
for the one year [9].

Amazon, and various 3rd parties, provide S D Ks that
allow developers to interact with Amazon Web Services. The
framework for Cloud Suite is written using S D Ks for P H P,
Python (Boto) and Unix forward slash Linux command line.
However S D Ks exists for multiple platforms and languages.
The provided S D Ks greatly ease interaction with the cloud
services provided by Amazon.

ii. Google Compute Engine

Amazon is far from the only available option for cloud
services. Google recently announced ‘Google Compute
Engine’ [10] , a service similar to Amazon E C 2, in addition
to the long standing Google App Engine. In the next section
we will take a closer look at cloud services offered by
providers other than Amazon.com.

iii. Heroku
Heroku {11] deservers special consideration because it is

one of the best examples of a platform for executing arbitrary
programs in the cloud. Heroku allows the end user to develop
an application and leave the running of that application up to
Heroku. The developer pushes code to Heroku using the Git
version control system. Once the code is present, Heroku
relies upon H T T P requests to interface with the client
application.

iv. Google App Engine
Google App Engine (G A E) [12] is another service similar

to Heroku semicolon however, Google App Engine places a
number of restrictions on what code developers may use.
Unlike an Infrastructure as a Service provider, G A E places
limits on what code may be executed as well as only allowing
the proprietary Google Query Language as a data store.

v. Eucalyptus
Extensive research on cloud technology has been

performed at University of California, Santa Barbara (U C S
B). Two of the most well known products of that research are
Eucalyptus and App Scale.

Eucalyptus is an open source emulator for Amazon E C 2
that can be run on local clusters square [13] . Since the initial
release of Eucalyptus, it has grown to become a commercial
success, and is included in the Ubuntu operating system.

vi. App Scale

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67

AppScale is an open source implementation of several
cloud A P Is, including Google App Engine. App Scale can be
deployed over Amazon E C 2, Eucalyptus, or an Ubuntu
image. App Scale uses virtualization to provide a uniform
experience across multiple cloud platforms.

vii. Coursera – Online Education
With the growth of high speed internet access to distance

learning has become increasingly more accessible. In addition
to universities supplementing their courses with online
offerings, many universities are also making classes available
online for free. Coursera is a central location where those
seeking to improve their education may participate in free
online classes from sixteen universities including: Caltech,
Stanford, and Princeton. Additionally many universities have
begun offering free classes online for no credit. One such
offering from University of California, Berkley made use of
Heroku to allow students to publish a web based application
and see results in real time. The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology also offers free online courses. It is important to
note that these online courses typically do not confer any sort
of degree or certificate, Coursera being notable in that some of
it ‘courses do offer an electronic certificate of completion
[14]. Courses offered online could make great use of a service
like Cloud Suite to provide their students with an interactive
lab component.

viii. Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a not for profit online educational
resource. Khan Academy offers videos explaining a variety of
topics. In addition to videos Khan Academy also offers a web
based set of tools for developing mathematical proficiency. In
late 2012 Khan Academy introduced Computer Science
curriculum that offers programming instruction and
demonstration. The programing curriculum is based on the
Java Script language and is overseen by John Resig [15]. The
program is designed to demonstrate the fundamentals of
computer science to someone with little to no experience.

ix. University of Hawaii Virtual Lab
In 2007 the Department of Educational Technology at the

University of Hawaii at Mano published a paper detailing an
experiment where an online biology class made use of a C D
hyphen ROM based virtual wet lab. The study compared the
use of a virtual lab to what the study referred to as a ‘face to
face’ lab. The data analysis showed that, while students found
the virtual labs to be useful, face – to -face lab time was more
valuable to the overall learning experience than a purely
computer-based lab. The study was primarily focused on the
effectiveness of the virtual lab and did not give great detail on
the technology [16].

x. Navy Virtual Lab
The Naval Postgraduate School (N P S) [17] has developed

a distance learning solution that allows non – resident students
to perform signal processing laboratory assignments. The
Electrical and Computer Engineering department has
developed an innovative mix of hardware and software to
allow students to access lab equipment regardless of their
location. The collection of signal generators and field
programmable gate arrays allow students to perform
experiments in real time.

VI. CONCLUSION
Cloud computing is basically a framework that allows us

to access applications that actually reside at a location other
than your computer. Virtualization is a technique to provide
abstraction between the hardware and software of a computer
system. In virtualization we create a virtual version of a
resource (generally computer system or application running on
it). The virtualization and cloud computing makes the
resources available to a remote location. Some resources are
shared between multiple users and accessed at the same time.
The technique uses the resource sharing and increase the
system utilization.

The Computer is virtualized in a clustered computing
environment controlled by Cloud computing to fully utilize
the computing and storage. The cloud will provide dynamic
resource allocation to ensure effective system utilization
through carefully monitoring of resource workload and
available physical resources, and providing managed solutions
on a continual basis. The most important aspect of
virtualization is to develop a platform that students can access
remotely without time and location constraints. The Cloud
provides a segregated virtual environment without affecting
any system outside of the cloud as well as other virtual
systems within the cloud.

REFERENCES
[1] Security Aspects of Virtualization in Cloud Computing. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273950406_Security_Aspects_
of_Virtualization_in_Cloud_Computing

[2] R M Sharma The impact of Virtualization in Cloud Computing
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[3] Oracle “The Structure of the Java Virtual Machine” http: // docs .oracle
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[4] “Google cloud services – App Engine”. [Online]. Available:
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[5] “Windows Azure: Cloud Computing, Cloud Services , Cloud
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[6] “Amazon Web Services”. [Online]. Available: http://aws.amazon.com/.
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California State University, Channel Island.
[8] EGI “European Grid Infrastructure” n.d. Web. http:// www.egi.eu/about/
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cloud.google.com/products /compute – engine .html.
[11] Robinson, Tom. “Re: How does Heroku Work”

http://www.quora.com/Scalability/.
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developers .google .com / appengine / kb / general.
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eucalyptus.
[14] Coursera, “Support Center” http:// help.coursera.org/ customer/ portal/

articles / 557884 – will-each-class-that-i-complete – 02.
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www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/v/khan-academy-
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[16] Stuckey – Mickell, Tracey, Stuckey – Danner, Bridget, Taylor, Brandon.
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[17] Cristi, Roberto. “ EC3400 Digital Signal Processing FFPGA Laboratory
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