Using Virtualization

🎯 Module Objectives

Track your progress! Click on each objective to mark it as completed as you study.

Understand virtualization and hypervisor concepts
Deploy and manage VMs in the cloud
Differentiate clustering, affinity, and hardware pass-through
Compare virtual network types (External, Internal, Private, Overlay)
Differentiate Local, NAS, and SAN storage architectures

🖥️ 6.1 Virtualization Concepts

🎯

Exam Objective 1.7: Compare and contrast virtualization concepts.

Virtualization is the foundation of cloud services. Administrators partition physical hardware resources among one or more virtual machines (VMs). A hypervisor manages these hardware allocations and controls VM access to hardware.

💡 IaaS Advantage: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides administrators with direct access to VM deployment and management without the overhead of maintaining physical hardware.

VM Management Lifecycle

Click on each step to explore the VM lifecycle:

Create

Maintain

Monitor

Delete

Create: Define the VM based on the use case, allocating CPU, memory, storage, and networking to participate on a network like a traditional server.

☁️ 6.2 Deploy Virtual Machines in the Cloud

Deploying VMs in the cloud is similar to local virtualization but requires cloud-specific values like regions, authentication, and metering identifiers. You must balance hardware resources with cost requirements.

⚙️ Purpose Choices

General purpose
Compute optimized
Memory optimized
Storage optimized

💾 Storage Choices

Premium Solid-state Drive (SSD)
Standard SSD
Standard Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

Cloud Console Deployment Flow

Azure Cloud Shell / VM Creation

admin@cloud:~$ init vm-deployment --wizard

[1/6] Setting Name: Test-Server01 | Region: East US

[2/6] OS Image: Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS

[3/6] Size: Standard_D2s_v3 (2 vCPU, 8GB RAM)

[4/6] Auth: SSH Public Key configured

[5/6] Storage: Premium SSD (30GB) | Network: VNet-01, Port 22 Open

admin@cloud:~$ Estimated Cost: $0.096/hour. Type 'create' to confirm.

Tip: You can download a template to automate the deployment of similar VMs in the future.

📋 6.3 & 6.5 Templates vs. Cloning

📄 Configuration Templates

Define VM parameters (CPU, RAM, network, storage) to construct identical VMs with preconfigured settings. Ideal for standardized initial deployments and cloud scalability.

🧬 VM Cloning

Provides a snapshot of the current configuration AND any data stored on the VM. Useful for rapid deployment of machines already in service, redundancy, or backups.

🔗 6.4 Clustering Virtualization

Clusters are groups of computers (nodes) configured to work together as a single unit. They provide fault tolerance (if one node fails, others maintain services) and performance benefits by spreading workloads.

🧲 Host Affinity

Links VM nodes to the same host system. Enhances performance because node communications occur using the host bus rather than the network.

🛡️ Anti-Affinity

Keeps VM nodes on separate hosts. Maintains fault tolerance (if one host fails, not all VMs go down) and prevents resource over-utilization.

Hardware Pass-Through

For high-performance computing, administrators can bypass the hypervisor management layer for direct hardware access, improving performance for:

GPU-intensive software Storage media access Network load balancers

🌐 6.6 Network Types

Cloud networks must integrate with on-premises networks over the Internet, requiring advanced options like Overlay Networks (using VXLAN, GRE, or NVO). They offer simplified administration, greater flexibility, and better segmentation, though they can increase troubleshooting complexity.

Virtual Machine Network Types

Click each type to see its access level:

Allows access to the host's network interface card (NIC) and the physical network beyond it. The VM acts like any other physical host on the LAN.

Allows network access to the host itself (but not its physical NIC) and other VMs on the host. No external network access is permitted.

Allows network access only to other VMs on the same virtual switch. No access to the host or the physical network beyond it.

💾 6.7 Types of Storage

Click on each storage type to reveal its characteristics, use cases, and limitations:

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Local Storage (DAS)

Click to expand

Direct-Attached Storage (internal SSDs/HDDs). Easy to install and configure, but very difficult to scale and share directly with other services.

🗄️

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Click to expand

A group of drives with a NIC, sharing folders via NFS or SMB. Quick and inexpensive to add, but performance is tied to overall network bandwidth.

🏢

Storage Area Network (SAN)

Click to expand

Highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and high-performance. Uses an isolated network and Host Bus Adapter (HBA) cards. More complex and expensive, ideal for enterprise data centers.