21. Virtualization Technology and Security

Virtualization is a process through which one can create something that is there in effect and performance but in reality not there—that is, virtual. It is a physical abstraction of the company’s computing resources like storage, network servers, memory, and others. VMware.​com, a software developer and a global leader in the virtualization market, defines virtualization as a process in which software creates virtual machines (VMs) including a virtual machine monitor called “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently so that multiple operating systems, called “guest operating systems,” can run concurrently on a single physical computer without even knowing it [1]. For example, using software virtualization, one can, using the existing underlying hardware and software resources like operating systems, create and run several independent virtual operating systems on top of one physical operating system using the existing hardware resources to execute independent system tasks. Hardware virtualization also takes the same concept where several servers or client machines can be created based on one underlying hardware. The virtualization concept has been with us for sometime.