Virtual Machines: Key Differences and Similarities. The infrastructure of your organization can be built on either a physical server, a virtual server, or the combination of both a hybrid server. Therefore, it is essential to consider a number of factors when choosing between the available options.
This blogpost draws the comparison between physical servers and virtual machines VMs by highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages which each of them provide. The physical server vs virtual server comparison should start with the definition.
The resources and components of a physical server are not shared between multiple users. Each physical server includes memory, processor, network connection, hard drive, and an operating system OS for running programs and applications. A bare-metal server is large in size due to the powerful processing components that it contains.
A virtual machine VM is a software computer used as emulation of an actual physical computer. In this case, the computing resources of a physical server are virtualized and shared among all VMs running on it. The architecture of a virtual server is a little more complex than that of a physical server. A hypervisor is then used to create and manage VMs, which have their own virtual computing resources.
After that, you can load multiple guest OSes and server applications on top of the virtual hardware. Thus, virtual servers allow you to run several OSes and applications on the basis of the shared physical hardware, which makes it a more cost-effective option than a physical server. To see the physical server vs virtual server differences, a closer look at all of their components is required. This factor should be considered if your organization works with a large amount of data which needs to be constantly processed.
Physical servers are far more powerful and efficient than VMs, due to the fact that VMs are prone to performance issues as a result of an overflow of virtual servers in a physical machine. Thus, a physical machine and a virtual machine, both having the same hardware and software resources and capabilities, cannot perform on the same level.
If your organization runs operations which require the use of computing resources to the fullest extent, a physical server is the optimal choice. As for the management factor, VMs are much easier to maintain than physical servers.
In case of server failure, it could take several days to restore a physical server to its original state. For VMs, the recovery process can be initiated in just a few clicks with the help of a previously-created VM backup. Moreover, a physical server must be closely inspected for any deficiencies and, if required, additional drivers should be installed and set up before it can be used. This is not the case with VMs as they are built upon physical hardware which is ready for use.
However, managing a virtual server environment requires a high level of expertise and specific skills. Thus, make sure that the members of your IT team are competent enough to control your virtual infrastructure. One of the major physical server vs virtual server differences lies in portability.
You can easily move VMs across the virtual environment and even from one physical server to another, with minimal input on your part. We will discuss the differences between them below. It is exactly as the title states. A physical server is a type of computer that is usually mounted in a rack in a network closet or server room. These types of computers run on Windows, or Linux, and invariably have large amounts of disk space for storing files. Usually these types of machines consume large amounts of power.
If a business starts adding two, three, or more physical servers, more power consumed equals more money paid to the electric company. Even though the cost of physical hardware has come down considerably when you look at the processing power you get for the dollar, physical hardware is still expensive.
Depending on the specs of the hardware that is provisioned, costs can be a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars for a single physical server.
Looking at the cost of a virtual machine can be a more abstract exercise since you can literally create as many VMs on top of a physical host running a hypervisor as the hardware can support. This can be helpful to have tangible information regarding the costs of your individual VMs. When it comes to a 1 to 1 comparison however, of physical server hardware for 1 workload compared to the ability to run many instances or workloads on top of a physical hypervisor host, VMs are a much more cost-effective and efficient use of your physical resources in the enterprise data center.
When you look at the physical footprint of a physical server, it can certainly be extensive. Whether it is a tower, rack, or blade type chassis, space will be required to accommodate the physical form factor of the server. If you think about literally having a physical server for each workload running to service a single solution, application, or set of users, the physical space required can add up.
Virtual machines on the other hand allow what is known as server consolidation. Over the past decade or more, many organizations have been undergoing this transformation from having a 1 to 1 physical server relationship with a single application to virtualized environments that can run 10, 20, 50, or more VMs per physical hypervisor host. VMs are certainly a more efficient use of physical space in the enterprise data center when compared to physical servers each running a single workload.
The lifespan of a physical server compared to a VM can be an interesting comparison. The general lifespan of physical server hardware in most enterprise environments ranges anywhere from years. This means that workloads running on top of the physical server hardware needs to be migrated off after that lifespan has been reached. Since virtual machines are abstracted from the underlying hardware of a physical server, virtual machine lifespans can be much longer than the physical hardware on which they reside.
After the lifespan has been reached for the underlying hypervisor host, a new hypervisor host can be provisioned in parallel with the current host and the VMs can be migrated over seamlessly. After this, the old physical hypervisor hardware can be decommissioned.
On the other side of the coin, with strong automation capabilities, virtual machines can be provisioned ephemerally and spun up and down as needed. After a user logs off, the non-persistent VM is destroyed. When comparing the migration possibilities with physical hardware vs virtual machines, physical server migration is much more difficult.
Migrating a physical server to new physical hardware involves many more complexities than a virtual machine. With physical server migration to new hardware, there are a couple of options. Option 1 requires the least effort. However, this option may be the most problematic in terms of drivers and other challenges with the image containing hardware references to the old physical server. This approach can result in bluescreens or hardware issues after the image is applied.
A maintenance period would be required and the application s hosted by the physical server would incur an outage during that period. By comparison, virtual machine migration is much easier.
Due to the fact that virtual machines are abstracted from the underlying physical hypervisor host hardware, migrating to new hypervisor hardware is a simple hypervisor-level migration process.
Migrating a VMware virtual machine. In many cases, companies are able to significantly mitigate risk by switching to virtualization vendors that offer appropriate safeguards against hardware failure and backups both on and offsite. The security of your physical or virtual servers depends largely on configuration, staff knowledge, and environment.
For many organizations with minimal budget or hardware, switching to virtualization can offer significant gains in security protection.
As your data assets increase, maintaining appropriate temperature and humidity can become more challenging. Does your staff have the knowledge and bandwidth to appropriately manage server acquisition, maintenance, configuration, and security?
Perhaps more important, are they aware of best practices for increasing efficiency and realizing cost savings? Switching to virtualization can free your IT team from dealing with data storage and server management, allowing them to focus on other priorities and opportunities for cost savings.
Many organizations choose to slowly migrate their workloads to virtualization over time. If this is your intent, communicate with your vendor about their existing migration tools, and have a conversation about application compatibility. Most businesses find that migration to virtualization, even when performed slowly over time, is much easier than they think.
You may have certain data assets that do not contain payment, health, or other types of information that are subject to regulatory requirements. In these cases, using a basic physical server that you already own could be the right choice. In a case study at Westminster College, the IT team decided to use physical servers to store camera footage while moving most of their overall workload to virtualization.
The Westminster team felt they could absorb the responsibility and risk of storing this data on premises, using a basic server that was already owned. Both physical servers and virtualized servers must meet all standards set forth by law. Typically, compliance is verified and measured by independent auditors. Depending on your use case, the right answer may be using both virtual and physical servers in a colocation datacenter. Virtual server hosting has matured and we are seeing more hybrid approaches where web facing servers may be virtual and back end, data crunching servers reside in a colo data center, resulting in a hybrid environment.
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