What is Server Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?

By Jeff Goldberg

Qualware IT Consulting and Instructional Services - www.qualware.com

IEEE Consultants Network Meeting – Wednesday, 6:30 PM, October 28, 2009

Note: different meeting location - At Lexington Depot, 13 Depot Square, Lexington, MA

Over the last five years, Virtualization has become one of the hottest
discussed topics and the leading component in the deployment of IT services from data centers across the country. From storage virtualization--think SAN, where multiple storage devices are pooled into what appears as a single storage resource for easier management, to desktop virtualization--think Citrix, which allows applications to be installed and managed on a centralized server while appearing to run from the local desktop machine, virtualization is everywhere.

When people talk about virtualization, they're usually referring to server virtualization, which means partitioning one physical server into several virtual servers, commonly referred to as virtual machines (VMs). Different virtual machines may run different operating systems and different applications while sharing the resources of a single physical computer. Special software, called the Hypervisor, makes it possible to isolate
virtual machines, insuring that if one virtual server crashes, it has no affect
on the others.

Hypervisors come in many implementations, each providing slightly different
facilities and imposing different restrictions in what can and cannot be accomplished.
This talk will attempt to provide answers to questions about the benefits and new challenges of virtualization, such as saving money and space, saving energy, saving time, providing high availability and disaster recovery, reducing management
headaches, but having a potentially limitless number of VMs which creates other problems.

Although a number of virtualization products including VMWare, Xen, Solaris
Zones/Containers, and possibly Microsoft's new virtualization product, will be
contrasted, the discussion of detailed features will be limited to VMWare's
ESX product, the undisputed leader in enterprise level virtualization.

Jeff Goldberg Biography

Jeff Goldberg, principal of Qualware IT Consulting and Instructional Services,
is a educator and consultant to companies that wish to incorporate virtualization
in their 24x7 data centers.  While providing help with on-site installation and setup
of VMWare's ESX3.5 product set, Mr. Goldberg generally leads customized hands-on
on-site corporate training sessions guaranteed to get staff up to speed and productive
in using the latest VMWare virtualization products.

He also provides IT solution consulting and delivers public seminars and on-site professional training classes, flexibly scheduled to avoid project disruption, on cutting-edge technologies, IT operations and programming languages.

He is currently an Executive Committee Member of the Boston Section of the IEEE, and a past chairman and co-founder of the IEEE Consultants' Network, Boston Chapter.
Mr. Goldberg was a Principal Hardware and Software Engineer for Hewlett Packard, Medical Electronics Division, and Applitek, a general purpose local area network developer company.

He was Technology Adviser and Lead Instructor of UNIX/Solaris/Linux for ten years at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute Waltham Campus until 2005, when WPI shut down this remote campus operation.  Mr. Goldberg has taught various VB/Delphi, C/C++, Java, Perl, PHP and SQL in addition to UNIX System's Administration, Networking, and shell scripting, at WPI, Boston University, Northeastern and various corporate training classes
for companies all over the eastern seaboard.

Jeffrey Goldberg is an honor graduate of Tufts University, with a B.S. in
Electrical Engineering and a minor in Human Factor Engineering and Computer Programming.

PLEASE NOTE:

No charge for Consultants Network members;  or non-members.  The meeting is free and open to the public. Casual dress.

The Consultants Network meeting starts at 6:30 PM. The meeting location is at the LEXINGTON Depot in downtown Lexington at 13 Depot Square, Lexington, MA.

Check the Consultants Network website for details and last minute information of our upcoming lectures series for 2009-2010

http://www.boston-consult.com/calendar.php

For more information, e-mail cn.boston@ieee.org or chairman@boston-consult.com; or contact the chairman Tom Vaughan at 781-344-0087. The Consultants Network website is at www.boston-consult.org.