Talk:Virtualization/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Virtualization. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Virtualization Simplified?

A lot of the definitions of virtualization I've read are fairly complex or nebulous. This Wikipedia entry is pretty good, but I was still looking for a more concise and fundamental definition of the term. After reading quite a few articles and definitions I believe it might be the following:

Virtualization is the process of making things more abstract in order to make them easier to use.

So using the storage example: Providing a high-level more abstract view of a large number of varied and complex storage devices allows them to be used more easily and thereby more effectively. This enables the development of higher level applications and technologies.

You can basically figure this out by reading this article, but I think it would be useful to make it a bit more explicit (assuming my interpretation is valid).

TonyC 23:50, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

TonyC, you are right in part, that virtualization is fundamentally abstraction, but ease of use is just one motivation behind it. For example, a virtual machine can be used to sandbox applications in a secure protective environment. An important motivation in server virtualization is efficiency; e.g. a single server can appear as several independent computers using virtualization, whereas this arrangement would need many more resources without. Both these examples would normally make the systems harder, not easier to use. I will edit the article for clarity and technical accuracy and hopefully thus respond to your comments.

NostinAdrek 13:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Wrong explanation of SMP

this: [..] A good example of virtualization is modern symmetric multiprocessing computer architectures that contain more than one CPU. Operating systems are usually configured in such a way that the multiple CPUs can be presented as a single processing unit. Thus software applications can be written for a single logical (virtual) processing unit, which is much simpler than having to work with a large number of different processor configurations. [..] is plain wrong. No OS can abstract multiple CPUs to one.

External links

An anonymous user and I disagree over whether it's appropriate to add a particular external link to Virtualization and many related articles. I do not want to go overboard in trying to stop spam, so any comments by those who agree or disagree would be welcome. The discussion is at User talk:85.18.136.96. Wmahan . 18:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's useful to link to external sites where the content is a continuously changing page each day (such as news aggregation sites or blogs), unless the article is specifically about just that website in particular. By providing an external link, we're trying to provide a convenience to the reader about an expectation of the relevance of the content that will be there. -- Bovineone 02:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I've just removed a few more RSS links that were just added... See also WP:EL, which also mentions choosing sites that have "substantive longevity". Besides that, I don't particularly see any bullet in the "What should be linked to" section that blog/news aggregation sites would fall clearly under. There is in fact an under under "Links to normally avoid" that mentions blogs should generally not be linked to. -- Bovineone 17:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Portability for applications

That last paragraph seems to make a prediction about the future. Do we do that here?

It will be interesting if desktop applications are eventually made to stay in their own backyard - that's going few steps back in history. --Johnruble 14:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Non-encyclopedic terminology

What is the significance of the strange bolded terms like frowned-upon, mysterious, well-known, popular, and rootkit technique that were introduced by User:74.121.29.86? They seem to be suggesting bias towards techniques and/or vendors. I don't see any citations or references around any of that terminology use either, so I'm inclined to believe it is original research or biased opinions. -- Bovineone 09:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is to emphasize that the outcast has become the mainstream when Microsoft bought Softricity. The first type can be quite dangerous because it is modifying system calls, similar to what hypervisor would behave in kernel mode, but it happened instead in user mode.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.121.29.86 (talk • contribs) .

Although your intentions seem good, please find some external sources or references that can be listed to verify all of these terminology uses, categorizations, and warnings. Otherwise people will be inclined to believe that they are neologisms and NPOV. Your tone seems to imply that you are greatly biased against Softricity-like functionality by using words with negative connotations (like "root-kit", "frowned-upon", "ill-behaved"). It is not Wikipedia's place to be a soapbox. Please provide third-party sources that back up your claims. -- Bovineone 04:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure, my section is still work in progress. I will provide more references later. I'm still busy with my work. But for now, here are some points to clarify:

I'm not bias against Softricity, because after all if Microsoft bought them, then of course, it should be good and mature enough. There has been an industry-biased in the past, not my-biased, so pardon me for the language as I am merely giving historical perspective. I guess you can help me to tone it down so that it won't be a soapbox. But then I used cheered-upon as to indicate that the outcast has become the mainstream. I'm not biased against "Streaming Applications". In fact, I believe that it is the future for software. However, their technique to accomplish it is a complete hack, modifiying system calls in the user mode. What would happen if "Virtual OS" from Thinstall and "SystemGuard" from Softricity run at the same time? Why running in the user mode? It is because Windows doesn't have a Hypervisor in the kernel, so once the Hypervisor is ready then "Application Streaming" will be full steamed ahead. Who need a simple Hypervisor running in the user mode when there is a real Hypervisor already running in the kernel mode. That's why the rootkit technique will become obsolete, but not the "Application Streaming" for the Application Virtualization. Again, it is the future for software distribution.
Now if you don't like the naming, then there are two ways to look at it:
- The first type is application packagers (Thinstall, Softricity) whereas the other is application compilers (Java and Dot Net). Because it is a packager, it can be used to stream applications without modifiying the source code, where as the later can only be used to compile the source code.
- Another way to look at is through the Hypervisor point of view. The first one is "hypervisor" in user mode, where as the other is "hypervisor" in runtime mode. I put the hypervisor in quotation, because both of them have similar behavior in that it intercept system calls in different mode: user mode and runtime mode. The user mode intercepts the system calls from the runtime mode before going to kernel mode. The real hypervisor only need to intercept the system call using hypercall in kernel mode. Again, once Windows have Hypervisor, there may even be no need for JRE and CLR.
- In summary, the first one is virtualizing the Binary so that it can be installed once and run anywhere, whereas the other is virtualizing the Source Code using Byte Code so that it can be written once and run anywhere. Both of them are actually partial solution to portability problem: application portability and source code portability. Maybe it is time to combine the two problems into one complete solution at the hypervisor level in the kernel mode. (Btw, how is my English? I'm an ESL. Did I confuse you? Please feel free to ask more questions.)
- So which one do you prefer: application packagers vs compilers or user mode vs runtime mode hypervisor ? I guess both of them are more neutral, but it would lose the historical perspective.
I'm sorry if my writing is not good enough and too biased. As I said, it is still work in progress. You can remove them temporarily if you like. But, please note that googling virtualization will give wikipedia as the first result. So, I'm hoping to work on this articles so that it would be up-to-date without making it to become a soapbox. Would you like to help me to revise it? Let's make virtualization article on wikipedia to become more and more interesting.

I think some of your content would be better suited for the Application Virtualization page instead of this one. This page should be limited to just the high-level overview of the different major classes, and providing links to the pages about the specific types. Can you move it there instead? Also, please consider create a wikipedia user account, since you are such a voluminous and noteworthy contributor. This will let people more easily contact you about your contributions in the future. Please also sign your messages on Talk pages by typing "~~~~" at the end of your posts. -- Bovineone 16:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it has become quite long, not high level enough. Actually I am already planning to move some to Application Virtualization, but it is not quite easy to integrate some of my content there. Yes, I have been scratching my head. Thanks for your feedback and encouragement. I haven't register because I haven't decide the username yet. Btw, I have noticed that googling Application Virtualization didn't put wikipedia on the top. So, again, I'm hoping that improving the article will make it the first, just as Virtualization already is. I believe that google PageRank is one of the indicator of the page popularity. -- TopRank 06:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm registered, I use TopRank because I am hoping to make every Wikipedia articles to become a googling TopRank as well as other search engines. Yeah, it would keep me busy for the rest of my life, which is good. Otherwise, I would be bored too death. ;-). However, I'm sorry I still haven't figure out how to integrate with Application Virtualization. Do you have any ideas? Why are you interested in virtualization? Would you like to help improving some articles? Meanwhile, how do you enjoy on my attempt to a poetic justice

Altiris and Softricity frowned upon each other kit

Filter Driver indeed!

A Prayer, you obsolete!!

If so, mine got answered Hip, Hip!!!

Filter Driver indeed!

But will be made obsolete!!

Because mine, Microsoft cheered-upon, Hyper Solid!!!

Whether indeed or obsolete, both frowned upon like FUD kids.

-- TopRank 09:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree; this article is atrocious. The section with the neutrality dispute is horribly biased, uses too many words such as "best" and "most user-friendly" which indicate someone's opinion instead of facts, appears to possibly violate the original research rule, and sounds far more like a trade magazine article or a press release than an encyclopedia article. And the random bold words have got to go. I came to this article hoping to learn more about virtualization, but now I'm more confused than before I read it. -—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.209.144.218 (talk • contribs) . at 16:00, 11 September 2006

Please read my poetic justice to give you a clue of the industry-biased, even among different vendors. Again, I'm merely giving a historical perspective. Maybe you would like to help in improving the articles. Did you try Thinstall and other application virtualization software already? This is the easiest compare to hardware level and OS level. Did you miss this part where I am comparing between the two levels? Should I write it more explicitly or should you read it more carefully? What words would you use to describe the easiest way to virtualize? Is user friendly not appropiate? The bold words are not random. It guides the reader to the point of the articles, just in case they miss it. Please give me feedback on how to write the article. Otherwise, saying that my article is atrocious, I would say those who can not write, can only criticize. But of course, you can write, so if you were me, what would you write? Moreover, could you please tell me why you are more confused than before you read it? Virtualization is not easy to understand because it is in the transition phase to kernel mode hypervisor. Could you please tell me specically which part made you confuse? Thanks. Please also sign your messages on Talk pages by typing "~~~~" at the end of your posts.

At Wi-Ki-pedia, "we" are the key, so discussion is very important, because consensus shall bring us closer together.

--TopRank 10:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

New Article: Virtualization Development

I think some of your content would be better suited for the Application Virtualization page instead of this one. This page should be limited to just the high-level overview of the different major classes, and providing links to the pages about the specific types. Can you move it there instead? Also, please consider create a wikipedia user account, since you are such a voluminous and noteworthy contributor. This will let people more easily contact you about your contributions in the future. Please also sign your messages on Talk pages by typing "~~~~" at the end of your posts. -- Bovineone 16:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've registered and move some to Virtualization Development, instead of Application Virtualization. Again, it is still work in progress. I will still work on the latter. Hopefully, once I have more time. Meanwhile, Any feedback is appreciated.

--TopRank 23:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC) --> Wi-Ki, "we" are the "key", therefore, consensus shall bring us closer together.

i removed some junk

the section on resource virtualization included the following non-enyclopedic, ungrammatical and irrelevant text, which i removed. Benwing 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

VMware's Raghu Raghuram think that this is a "small market opportunity". There is also Grid Computing skeptic who argues whether "super-computational power is required for the accounts payable system or to run your e-mail client", whereas other is very optimistic that believe "It will be a revolution for which the industry must prepare".

In particular, ZDnet's Paul Murphy believe that Resource virtualization should be more in demand than Server Virtualization: "Virtualization in the old sense of breaking up a single box to manage the resources available to individual processes is generally a costly solution to a problem set we don't have anymore". IBM's Kevin Leahy agreed when he said that "(Server) Virtualization stalled in the marketplace", because "Customers started with say 100 physical machines and when they were done, they had 400 virtual machines. When they did that, they made their jobs more difficult."

more removed junk

this needs serious cleanup work if it is to be included. Benwing 05:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Application Streaming

In the past, software was able to be installed in the network such as Novell. However, in Windows it has been locked down onto the local Desktop, which may have caused the downfall of Novell. This bring a new possibility, not just portability in the USB, but streaming through the network. It is similar to watching streaming movies on the internet: it can be watched before the download is complete. So, while it is downloading, the software can already be run. Let us just hope that this will really be the future for software distribution, not just using AJAX 'Web Jail' applications. Yes, Google Maps, not to mention Google Spreadsheets and Writely, will be even more secure, interactive, and collaborative between Google friends. Such a secure and user friendly environment between Google software might even deserved to be called Google OS, not just another Web OS. So, if Thinstall were to be acquired by Goggle, then it will be able to compete with Microsoft head to head in the Streaming Applications to revolutionize the future computing. Why would Google wait until 2009 when Windows have its Hypervisor ready, when it can already stream applications right now? Set Google free from the 'Web Jail' : Let the application streaming begin.

even more removed junk

who added this stuff, anyway? "bring it on, google!"????? in any case, i don't see the relevance of anything in this section; acquisitions of one company by another have nothing directly to do with the computer science concept of virtualization.Benwing 05:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(section "Timelines of Players")

IBM
- 1960
Sun
Hewlett-Packard
EMC
- Late 2003, EMC acquired VMware for $635 million.
VERITAS
- Late 2003, VERITAS acquired Ejascent for $59 million.
Microsoft
- Early 2003, Microsoft acquired Connectix Corporation.
- July 17, 2006 Microsoft bought Softricity. Here comes the King! ^[1]
Google
- ???, Thinstall were acquired to compete head to head with Microsoft and its Softricity. Bring it on, Google!

well, you know...

I take your point about the "bring it" style :-) but you know, there was good stuff in that chunk, that I'd have liked to have read. Andrew (talk) 06:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Updates on 11/18/2006 to section 'software virtualization'

I began with a small change, which snowballed (as they often do) to include:

Added before the list: "The following are not universally-recognized terms, but they will help place the different approaches in context:"; this relates to my concluding observation below.

Added the critical omissions of CP-40, CP/CMS, and VM from native virtualization (this is after all where so many of these concepts came from in the first place).

Removed the two-level bullets.

Made the citation of examples consistent (e.g. → Examples include).

Flagged the jarring final case of Application Virtualization, which is clearly the odd man out in the list. (It may make sense to remain here, since the distinction is useful, but clearly it has little to do with the other technologies and has more to do with the other (non-virtualization) senses of virtual machine.)

Tried to reconcile the language to embrace both "operating system" cases and "application" cases.

My comment about the terms not being universally-recognized refers to a fundamental issue with this section's list of bullets, which link off to a series of sub-articles. Basically, although I don't argue with the way the technologies have been broken down here, I do not think these are generic computer science terms and distinctions. Professionals would probably look at the bullet list and nod; but they might scratch their heads when reaching the leaf-node pages. See Talk:Native_virtualization for further comments.

I think that this article needs to be reorganized to reflect a) less of a bias to the issues and players of 2005-2007, since these are fundamental CS concepts; and b) a taxonomy and presentation strategy that correspond to mainstream CS sources. There are of course many different ways to skin this particular cat, and we won't find absolute consensus among writers and historians. But we can't invent new terms, or borrow them from today's vendors, and expect to wind up with a credible set of articles. (I hope this is seen as useful. I do realize that there is probably a hard core of x86 virtualization gurus for whom this material already seemed right on target. But from an historical perspective, I think it needs attention.) Trevor Hanson 06:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and the "Further development" subsection makes me squirm. Trevor Hanson 06:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

"Partial virtualization"

I've added a category of "partial virtualization" between "full virtualization" and "paravirtualization". Although this may not sit well with everybody, I think we need a category for a system like IBM M44/44X – with virtual machines and multiple address spaces, but not full hardware simulation and the ability to boot multiple operating systems. There is a fuzzy line between such a system and any OS that provides address space isolation. Or rather there really is no such line, and all such operating systems could be considered in the same category. We wouldn't tend to view them as virtual machine systems today, but they were a huge step forward from earlier approaches to multitasking. Please feel free to butcher my addition if you see a better way to deal with this. I don't think we want to rewrite history based on today's categories however. Trevor Hanson 03:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the M44/44X fits very nicely here, but this section also includes OS/VS1, OS/VS2 and MVS which really don't belong. OS/VS1 and OS/VS2 were single address space operating systems and the only thing virtual about them was that applications ran in virtual memory. MVS (originally OS/VS2 Release 2) changed this by having multiple address spaces, but it's not otherwise virtual - if that were the case, then every virtual memory OS would be! MVS applications in their own address spaces shared the same namespaces for security, user authentication, file systems, lock management, system operation, etc. In fact, they even had the non-userland portions of their address spaces shared in common. Putting these OS flavors in a category of virtualization is not accurate. jsavit. 21 May 2007

From today's perspective, that's certainly a valid point. But historically in terms of OS evolution – and looking at the system environment from the point of view of a running chunk of application code – I think it's appropriate to view many earlier large operating systems as providing a partially-virtualized environment. (I had cited multiple address spaces as an example of partial virtualization, not a defining characteristic.) Compare an application running under DOS (or CP/M, or one of the weaker implementations of x86 virtualization), versus one running under MVS, or even OS/VS1. A VS1 application appears to be embedded in a complex virtual(ized) machine that is quite different from the raw hardware. Though far from what we call virtualization today, this represented a big technological step forward from earlier operating systems, which were often glorified run-time libraries. Of course, virtualization is used to describe many different concepts. But I do think it's important not to lose sight of how virtualization crept into many aspects of the application/OS interface. Trevor Hanson 18:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Trevor (and sorry for my not remembering the obscure wiki mark-up for these notes). My claim here is that to extend the label "partial virtualization" to sytems like OS/VS1 (for example) really dilutes the notion of virtualization to the point where it's not particularily useful. Such systems offer a set of abstractions for I/O, program loading, scheduling, memory allocation, and they provide _one_ virtual asset: virtual memory. If we call such a system virtual, then we can with justice say that OS/360 MFT and MVT were virtual, since they offered the same abstractions except for virtual storage. (VS1 and VS1R1 were no more than MFT and MVT, respectively, with dynamic address translaction turned on). If I linked an executable with AC(1) on OS/VS (or hack myself into supervisor mode, which was really easy in MVT) I could in fact execute instructions on the bare hardware). Even without that, on those systems a normal application can see (cannot be prevented from seeing) real location 0 in RAM, the current contents of the CPU timer, and so on. What we're describing here is a protection mechanism and a layer of abstraction. Nothing is virtualized away. If these systems are described as partially virtualized, then so are all Unixes from 1974 on, OS/2, EXEC8, Multics, and goodness knows what else. These are all sharply different than things like M44/44X in which a private machine environment is created, let alone things like CP-40, CP/67, and the VM family. The essence of virtualization is that one pretends something is there that really isn't - conventional operating systems like OS/VS1, OS/VS2 only did that with respect to how much RAM you had - nothing else. Even MVS falls into that category. Why invent a distinction not held by the developers and users of those systems? regards, jsavit Tue May 22 17:44:12 EDT 2007

Yes, that's a pretty convincing argument. Actually I think a case can be made that all the 'relatively modern' OSes you list (Unixes [Unices?], OS/2, Multics, etc.) do create a partially-virtualized environment for running applications – they all basically inherit the CTSS model of multitasking by simulating multiple quasi-machines. The apps can't run on the bare machine, but require the abstraction layer created by the OS. As you say, these quasi-machines are not the robust virtual machines (M44/44X "pseudo-machines") that we think of as part of virtualization today. But to my mind it is still a kind of virtualization. However I realize this thinking is on a par with "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" As I reread the article's description of "partial virtualization", the key features that distinguish this type of system from its predecessors are resource sharing and process isolation – notably absent from the earliest OSes, still weak in OS/MFT and OS/MVT, and robust in CP (and some modern systems). Somewhere in the continuum between MFT and CP is a point where I'd say the application environment became "partially virtualized". Are you comfortable with the paragraph as it stands now? Or do you think more needs to be excluded from the category? BTW four twiddles (~~~~) will insert your signature: Trevor Hanson 02:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Trevor, and glad you liked my line of discussion. I'm going to have to reread about M44/44X and CTSS, and think about it. If this characterisation is so broad as to be equivalent to "abstraction", performed by any conventional OS, then we have to consider whether the category needs to be preserved at all. Something to think about! In any case, thanks for your note, and for the (boy, is that non-obvious!) way of inserting signature. I have to find the markup reference page... cheers, Jeff. Jsavit 20:37, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Big edit on 12/8/2006

I bit the bullet and did a large edit today, trying to reduce some problems I saw in the current state.

One change was removing this link and text from the overview, which strikes me as too close to vendor spam:

http://www.emausa.com/research/ema_product.php?product=5000_1147 Virtualization: Exposing the Intangible Enterprise], 2006, Enterprise Management Associates

"a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource."

I have tried to make the rest of the article read more like an encyclopaedia entry; it had accumulated a number of disparate points which I don't feel really hung together. I also felt it needed more historical grounding, since virtualization is NOT a new topic and there is a ton of literature behind the term.

I moved a chunk of material, dealing with USB drive implementations under Windows, to portable application. Since there were no citations and no examples provided, I don't know whether this was just an architectural speculation, a design strategy used by some vendors (which it is no doubt), or the basis of actual tools available today. Are these the solutions referenced under Application Virtualization? Whoever added that material might try to beef up portable application with any concrete examples. If this is basically just the same points as under Application Virtualization then why repeat them? Also, I didn't think that the "hopefully" sentiment belonged in WP. Similarly, the "LivePC" section probably needs some attention, especially in terms of how these products relate to the underlying virtualization concepts.

Sorry if any of this goes against the grain. Naturally, feel free to go in and hack it up, or revert it if you have violent objections. Trevor Hanson 02:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for "isation" vs "ization"

This article used the English naming convention "Virtualisation" rather than the English-US "Virtualization"> However, the supposedly referenced articles actually use the US convention thus the links were broken. I've change to the US convention so that the articles are properly linked. TerryE (talk) 13:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Heads up

This dab page is the subject of a long discussion elsewhere: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Virtualization. --Una Smith (talk) 03:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I've added further info to the referenced page recommending a merge of the platform virtualization stubs. UncleDouggie (talk) 07:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Clean-up, June 2009

This was tagged for clean-up in June. The reasons given were: some cleanup--needs more (citations not needed for dabs, rm stray text and links, things not called "virtualization". Additionally, it is tagged as a number of articles direct here, and it is unclear which of the terms they should be giong to. I am unsure which of these entries would be known as 'virtualization' rather than just have the word in their name, and I think it would take someone who knows these terms well to deal with the incoming links. Any ideas on how to tackle this? Boleyn3 (talk) 12:22, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The idea is to find reliable sources for these definitions. These are buzzwords, most of this stuff is happening right now, so this is a difficult task. Over the longer period of time, I see a lot of original research here, and most of contributors come to promote their POV in hope of increasing the profits. Too bad Wikipedia recommends dab pages to go non-cited, I think this page should be an exception. --Kubanczyk (talk) 14:35, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I've dealt with about 60 of the incoming links so far. It'll probably take me several weeks to complete in my spare time. --UncleDouggie (talk) 08:28, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Down to 136 incoming article links! We need to do something about Emulation or simulation. Emulation is loosely related. Simulation not so much. Neither follows the guideline because they don't contain the word virtualization. UncleDouggie (talk) 01:45, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Virtualization vs. Virtual

There is a related page at virtual that needs lots of help. We now have three entries on this page that are virtual rather than virtualization. Neither has things like virtual reality. Please see the discussion going on related to the future of virtual. UncleDouggie (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Incoming link cleanup

I've finished fixing the 200+ incoming links to this dab page! It was quite an interesting tour through a ton of messed up pages. In the process, I realized just how much work this dab page needs (some of which I've already fixed.) See my comment above on virtual for more. I've only had one revert of a change so far, which I was able to resolve. I'll watch the rest for a few more days. Here are the remaining incoming links and the reasons for them:

Virtualisation - redirect page
Virtualizing - redirect page
Virtualize - redirect page
V12n - redirect page (shorthand term for virtualization used by a minority of people)
Global Language Monitor - list of ambiguous terms
Computer Measurement Group - broad applicability to everything on the dab page
Trigence - redirect page that I've nominated for deletion

UncleDouggie (talk) 00:07, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

V12N

It seems to me that V12N is not in very common usage. I still don't understand how it is considered an abbreviation for virtualization after a bunch of research to confirm the validity of the redirect we have in place from V12n to here when I was cleaning up the incoming links. It does have 75K hits on Google, but many are blogs. And is it v12n, V12n, or V12N? Since we have the redirect already, does it really deserve mention in the first line of this page? Also, references are not permitted on dab pages. UncleDouggie (talk) 03:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Never heard of the term before, it certainly isn't in widespread use. Just because some obscure web site uses it doesn't justify inclusion. -- heiser (talk) 12:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Errr, what? At least one of those blogs happens to be Microsoft's official blog for Windows Server, a product which includes virtualization technologies. See here. Same with VMWare's official blog, which gives due prominence to the term. See here. VMWare and Microsoft are the world's #1 and #2 providers of commercialized software virtualization products. If they're using the terms in their public discourse, then the terms have an inherent validity. WP:SPS allows blog postings from such organizations as sources, so long as it's not unduly self-serving (which a mere abbreviation is not; it's not like either group is claiming to have invented it).

Also, Heiser, WP:IDONTKNOWIT isn't a yardstick by which we measure inclusion of content in an encyclopedia. It's not like Wikipedia exists to document everything you know, and nothing you don't..... don't be afraid to learn something new every now and then. ;-)

I'm going to restore the abbreviation, and I expect it to stay there unless someone can explain to me how the use of the term by the world's two largest virtualization software companies isn't sufficient. Warren -talk- 02:00, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Would someone please explain to me how v12n resembles virtualization? Did someone just pull it out of the air and now no one knows where it came from? Personally, I think it looks silly to have an nonsensical abbreviation in the first line of a dab page. We'd probably need to have a ref for it, and those aren't permitted on dab pages. I don't see what it adds to the page and I don't see any consensus for reintroducing it. I don't see anything at all in WP:SPS that applies here. For those that love the term so much, please write an article to replace the current v12n redirect. It probably would clear up confusion for lots of people. UncleDouggie (talk) 11:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It's similar to I18n and L10n in the it's the letter v and 12 where 12 stands for the number of letters between the v and the n. The first instance I've found of the acronym is in 2005.[1] It seems to be used very sparingly. I'm not sure it really needs to be included in the disambiguation page, maybe on one of the virtualization articles. Mahanga^Talk 18:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! It turns out that we have an article on numeronyms. However, it showed v12n as visualization (which is the wrong number of letters anyway), so I fixed it. I also made all this clear in the intro. I still don't really like it. But if it is to stay, it needs to at least not confuse people. In favor of retention is that if someone searches for v12n, they will be redirected to virtualization and maybe wonder how they got here? It seems if they searched for v12n, they should be darn sure what they were looking for, so I'll just ask Warren to provide a better defense of retention. In favor of removal is the distraction it adds to the first line of the page when dabs are supposed to make it fast and easy for readers to jump to what they want. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Virtualization gets 55K page views/month. v12n gets 12. Not 12K, just 12. In fairness, virtualization will drop because I recently disambiguated the incoming links. UncleDouggie (talk) 11:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Now you've got me typing v12n to get to this page! But I still don't want it in the intro. UncleDouggie (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. It really doesn't belong in "See also," since there's no "also" article named v12n to see.

WP convention is that if there's an alternate name redirected to an article, that alternate name is often added to the lede in bold. But this is a dab page, so the same rule doesn't necessarily apply. There should be some explanation somewhere as to why "v12n" dumps you here, though.--NapoliRoma (talk) 13:37, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Article vs. disambiguation

I noticed there's some new content here, but no cited sources. Without sources, a disambiguation page is equally helpful. It drives the reader to articles like hardware virtualization, easily and efficiently. --Pnm (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I would like to point out that Virtualization once was a full article see that version. It got converted to disambig page in 2008, after this conversation. Some of the old contents may be useful to you. If you'll accept my advice, once Virtualization is re-converted from disambig to an article, it will instantly become target for a couple of viral-marketing departments. I think that keeping article on academic level (i.e. reliable academic sources and high-level explanations), as opposed to commercial level (i.e. any examples of commercial products), could partly alleviate this. By the way, I don't plan to contribute to the article myself, I'm sort of fed up with IT topics. --Kubanczyk (talk) 05:59, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry for the sources; since these new contributions are just a summary of their main articles, I'll browse the main articles and drop the sources here. Fleet Command (talk) 07:29, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Mind you, the new contents are here because the old disambiguation page did not drive the reader that I was to correct article. There was a void of information. Fleet Command (talk) 07:31, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Distinction between virtualization and emulation (to the extent there is any) needs to be properly delineated. Present wording is a bad joke. Any distinction here should be honest about the marketing impact on this language. Marketers always want to invent a new set of words when any idea fails. The best interests of knowledge are not necessarily served by so doing.Rakarlin (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

They do not have any difference. Only they are used in certain places. Nobody says that Virtual PC is an emulation program while it matches the definition given in the article. If you want more clarification, you can find it here because this article is just a summary of other articles. Fix those articles (with source) and will fix it here. Fleet Command (talk) 12:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Provocative edits

I should have posted this message hours earlier but I was stuck with a unusable keyboard at that time. Here is the deal: Ten hours ago, 184.91.210.220 made this edit with this edit summary:

It gave an example of Windows hosting Mac. I switched it to Mac hosting WIndows, because there are virtual machines available for mac to host windows, and none for windows to host OSX.

The edit summary is invalid. (See comparison of platform virtual machines). But it is besides the point: What he changed was a purely hypothetical example.

However, such edits are not unseen. I have seen many Mac OS fans in Wikipedia changing the order of OS in infoboxes from "Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux" (sorted alphabetically; descending) into "Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux" (unsorted). Then, a Linux fan comes along and changes the order so that Linux is at the beginning. Then, along comes a Windows fan... and so the cycle of edits that make no difference to anyone continue. These edits are just fanatic and trouble-provocative.

So, if the example is a good example, then do not change the order of its items. Fleet Command (talk) 03:47, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I think a few HTML comments and/or semi-protection may help.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:48, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

comment

Physicalization needs to be added as its own topic, but I'm unclear on how to do that in Wikipedia, given that Physicalization is used in its archaic form and redirected to Physics, proper. This will have to do for now, and I leave it to someone more skilled to figure out how to best represent this on Wikipedia

Please sign your comment.Jasper Deng (talk) 06:05, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

You may well be correct. However, could you provide an example of such within the framework of computers and their use? Thanks. - KitchM (talk) 21:22, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

This Article Needs A New Approach

This article needs some cleanup and rearrangement within the wikipedia portals. This appears to be a sub-portal of the computing portal. As such, it should have the sub-items of hardware virtualization, software virtualization, virtual machine, etc.. Right now we have software virtualization, for example, containing hardware virtualization. They should be two separate items under Virtualization. True hardware-based virtualization is hardware which is designed in such a way that its BIOS can handle multiple operating systems at the same time regardless of their hardware demands.

I see this article as the top of the list regarding all things related to virtualization in computing. There is little doubt that most readers can grasp that more easily, regardless of their background or education level.

Also, we need more common-sense definitions rather than relying upon poor choices of references. I suggest strongly that we base our terminology use on dictionary definitions rather than some questionable usage of some term by an individual or group. An example would be to quote a couple people of some renown in their usage, but follow that up with a dictionary definition that conforms to the orginal base meaning.

Comments? (Please sign and indent properly.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by KitchM (talk • contribs) 21:37, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

If you're talking about subpages, they have been disabled in this namespace. And yes, this article is somewhat of a list.Jasper Deng (talk) 21:50, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

The opening sentence/definition makes no sense

Virtualization (or virtualisation), in computing, And it is highly and frequently used system, is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, storage device, or network resources.[1]

"in computing, And it is highly and frequently used system," << I do not know what this sentence means, and English is my first language

Nik.martin (talk) 14:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Citations and references

Hello; where more detail-specific references are not available, I intend to try and ground some of our assertions and explanations in materials such as the VirtualBox user manual. However, I'd prefer to not weight the references particularly towards any specific software package. Any suggestions for the most coherent documentation? We might as well lean towards documents that are clear and complete. Thanks, Breakpoint (talk) 22:14, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

ITEC 544 Proposed Changes

Date: 11-19-12

With using Virtualization an enterprise will be able to better manage updates and rapid changes to the operating system and applications without disrupting the user. "Ultimately, virtualization dramatically improves the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in an organization. Instead of relying on the old model of “one server, one application” that leads to underutilized resource, virtual resources are dynamically applied to meet business needs without any excess fat" (ConsonusTech).

The source used is from a HubPages article on The Impact of Virtualization on Business:

Citation:

Tech, Consouns. The Impact of Virtualization on Business. HubPages, 19, Feb. 2010. Web. 19, Nov. 2012.

For a group project this semester at The University of South Carolina, we the students of the iIT program will be immersed in the ever evolving world of Wikipedia. This is only a proposed change by our group and for a project’s purpose only. So please excuse any elementary attempts to improve this topic.

Dwright7861 (talk) 22:06, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages

I wish there were some distinct section discussing the comparative advantages and disadvantages of using or not using virtualization. Right now a visitor seeking to answer the question, "when should I use virtualization?", or the question, "when should I not use virtualization?", will not find any coherently presented answer to his/her question. So how about it? (Erenoh (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2012 (UTC))

Potentially misleading virtualization example

Section 1.1 (Types of virtualization > Hardware) gives an example of OSX hosted by another platform. Whereas this is possible, it is difficult to achieve and I believe against Apple's licensing terms. My concern is that it is not the best possible example.

Original quote: "For example, a computer that is running Microsoft Windows may host a virtual machine that looks like a computer with Mac OS X operating system."

I would suggest a better and more common example of running Windows or Linux on OSX, Windows or Linux hosts. Okevin (talk) 20:17, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Generally, I don't think should mind hypothetical examples, but okay: How about Windows hosting Linux? There are a lot of famous virtual machines for Windows; and no one can stop anyone else from using Linux on any machine be it virtual or actual. Fleet Command (talk) 23:09, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

It would be far more efficient to run a Windows virtual machine from within Linux. Perhaps we can reverse the order of the example? 24.167.146.203 (talk) 23:27, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

'Advanced Capabilities"

Are things like snapshotting advanced, or just an inevitable extension of the basic concept? --SimonBramfitt (talk) 01:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Desktop Virtualization is not Virtualization in this sense.

I think this section should be removed, VNC, remote desktops, multiseat etc... do not simulate any hardware. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.201.181.223 (talk) 07:10, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. Hello. What makes you think virtualization must involve some virtual hardware? Hardware virtualization and storage virtualization are the only forms of virtualization that involve some hardware. Other forms do not. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 12:09, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"In computing, virtualization is simulating a hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or network resources." VNC and things is a completely different than this, virtualization is about is about executing incompatible binary formats in the host OS or providing a chroot-like environment for security purposes. Storage virtualization is too a different thing, it's done to make fast and reliable storage infrastructure which OSs can use transparently. Similarly, the purpose of desktop visualization is mostly to operate a remote system. There is no software simulation involved here. 117.214.173.204 (talk) 09:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I am afraid repeating yourself does not make me agree anymore than I agreed before. That definition barely describes a little more than what a hypervisor do. Apart from that, you are putting up a straw man: Desktop virtualization is not Remote desktop software. Remote desktop software is just one of its tools. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 14:08, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

No Section Devoted to Legal or Law Aspects of Virtualization

Think there should be a section at the bottom of this article referencing the legal or (copyright) law aspects of using virtualization with software under copyright protection, or additional corporate specific end user licensing. For example, Microsoft's licensing for Windows 7 and 8 operating systems requires a separate license for every virtual machine, which seems to go above and beyond the copyright act's only one software instance at one time. Other examples of copyright act issues using virtual machines are running old games within an emulator, such as MAME or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. --roger (talk) 07:15, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi.

First, wrong article! Hardware virtualization seems to be what you are looking for. In case of most other forms of virtualization, such as bandwidth virtualization and memory virtualization, there is zero legal issues.

Second, I am afraid if I wanted to start debunking all the mistakes in the assumptions behind you message, I'd have be keep writing until tomorrow. To put it briefly, anything after "for example" is wrong, plus wrong, multiplied by wrong. So, before proposing or adding anything to hardware virtualization article, please consider checking your facts against reliable third-party sources and learning more about copyright laws, contract laws and end-user license agreements.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 10:52, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Hey, does that mean you can run the same copy of Windows 7 or 8 in more than one virtual machine at the same time? Or in only up to four VMs, or not at the same time? Any chances, please, for deciphering the licensing description (is it the same for Windows 7?) – in a few words of course, please? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Haha! That's exactly what makes me keep writing for an entire day! But in a few words, yes: It is licensed per machine; virtual or actual does not make a difference. And as I said, this only concerns the form of virtualization that involves machines. In most other forms, there is near-zero legal issues. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! Yeah, when it comes to Microsoft and legal/licensing stuff, there's never too much additional explanation. :) That's pretty crazy, an additional license is required for each virtual machine... I don't even want to ask what happens when VLK becomes involved. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 08:32, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Nested virtualization

Nested virtualization refers to virtualized virtualization, or simulation of a virtual machine within another. The general concept can be extended to an arbitrary depth. A nested guest virtual machine need not be homogenous with its host virtual machine (e.g., application virtualization within hardware virtualization, etc.).

Nested virtualization is the general virtualization topic of combining multiple levels of virtualization and is not specific to system/platform/hardware virtualization despite its current popularity for such with cloud computing. There are many reliable sources for this including:

Lauer, H. C.; Wyeth, D. (1973). "A recursive virtual machine architecture". Proceedings of the workshop on virtual computer systems. pp. 113–116. doi:10.1145/800122.803951.
Goldberg, R. P. (1973). "Architecture of virtual machines". Proceedings of the June 4–8, 1973, national computer conference and exposition on - AFIPS '73 (PDF). pp. 309–318. doi:10.1145/1499586.1499669.
Popek, G. J.; Goldberg, R. P. (July 1974). "Formal requirements for virtualizable third generation architectures". Communications of the ACM. 17 (7): 412–421. doi:10.1145/361011.361073.
Belpaire, G.; Hsu, N. T. (November 1975). "Formal properties of recursive Virtual Machine architectures". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 9 (5): 89–96. doi:10.1145/1067629.806526.
Ford, B.; Hibler, M.; Lepreau, J.; Tullmann, P.; Back, G.; Clawson, S. (October 1996). "Microkernels meet recursive virtual machines". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 30 (SI): 137–151. doi:10.1145/248155.238769.
Ben-Yehuda, M.; Day, M. D.; Dubitzky, Z.; Factor, M.; Har'El, N.; Gordon, A.; Liguori, A.; Wasserman, O.; Yassour, B. (2010). "The turtles project: design and implementation of nested virtualization". OSDI'10 Proceedings of the 9th USENIX conference on Operating systems design and implementation (PDF). 1924943.1924973.
Jones, M. Tim (22 Aug 2012). "Nested virtualization for the next-generation cloud". IBM DeveloperWorks.
"4th Gen Intel Core vPro Processors with Intel VMCS Shadowing" (PDF). Intel. Retrieved 2013-08-17.

I will admit most of the interest and notability on the term "nested virtualization" currently focuses on its use with platform virtualization but there are numerous other instances such as nested application virtualization:

IKVM.NET: a Java virtual machine (JVM) in/on a Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) VM such as MS' Common Language Runtime (CLR)
PyPy: a Python implementation that recompiles (much like QEMU does) to Java bytecode and Common Intermediate Language (CIL) among others.

Technically nested virtualization arise even without consciously intending to (this one of the key benefits of virtualization: it implements some standard "machine" and one can just use it without concern), e.g., using Valgrind (a dynamic recompilation VM) to debug memory on an application run on an OS in a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

I hope this adequately establishes and argument for inclusion of "nested virtualization" as a general virtualization topic. Thanks. Uzume (talk) 14:04, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Nested virtualization can be merged into this article Malkav182 (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal for Nested virtualization

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge the articles. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

On October 5, 2014, Balabiot proposed Nested virtualization article for deletion, with the following explanation:

Besides the multiple issues listed below, this article seems more like advertising material for Ravello's product. The proposed meaning and purpose of nested virtualization ("cloning existing multi-tier applications from the data center into the cloud") is only used by Ravello; compare with this VMware knowledge base article ("VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) and other technical professionals are encouraged to use nesting to learn about VMware's server products, experiment with server setup, conduct training, show demos, and test configurations") or with the Wikipedia article on virtualization. The creator has hardly any contribution outside this topic.

While the majority of expressed concerns sounds reasonable, I'd say that the article shouldn't be deleted; instead, a compacted and cleaned up version should be merged into Virtualization § Nested virtualization. Thus, I've replaced the deletion proposal tag with the one suggesting a merger. Thoughts? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:44, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Support. That's a nice idea, what can I say. But the amount of pruning is going to be daunting. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:13, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
Support I once considered an article on this, but there aren't enough sources and that article as written is indeed pretty promotional.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

This has been cooking for long enough, so went ahead and merged the articles. In fact, pretty much no content from the Nested virtualization article was reused (by the way, a significant portion of it was a straight copy-and-paste from this source); thus, I haven't placed merger tags on the talk pages. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 11:10, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.