Companies that use physical resources in order to store large quantities of data may be at a disadvantage because the scalability of physical resources is limited. Buying more computers and other equipment takes up the company’s property and costs money. Therefore, some organizations may choose to apply a virtualization solution to their business. Creating a virtual server rather than a physical one is becoming a popular way to store significant amounts of data without taking up additional space. However, it is important for companies to consider the scalability of virtual solutions. Researchers say that virtualization of operations gives companies more scalability and flexibility of resources (Sajid & Raza, 2013). This paper aims to evaluate the effect that scalability has on virtualization of the business’s operations.
Virtualization can be explained as the process of moving the organization’s information and activities to a virtual server. Some businesses choose to rely on cloud services entirely, while others only use them as additional workload sources. If an organization wants to create a virtualization solution, it needs to consider the possible ways to increase its scalability. The scalability of physical equipment or hardware is based on two main directions – horizontal and vertical. Horizontal scaling, otherwise called scaling out, is connected to adding more machines to the system. By simply purchasing additional computers for servers, a company utilizes horizontal scaling. Thus, the process of scaling out gives a company an ability to have more equipment that is dedicated to the server environment. On the other hand, vertical scaling, or scaling up, involves a company purchasing the most efficient equipment for the system. For example, a company can buy processors and RAM of the highest quality and replace old parts with new advanced ones. Thus, scaling up does not result in more computers being used but in better hardware overall. These measures may be expensive for some businesses. Therefore, virtual scaling may be considered.
Scalability in virtualization deals with virtual means of improving servers’ workload. Thus, horizontal scaling increases the number of virtual machines, while vertical scaling deals with adding additional resources to the system. Companies can scale up by extending the system’s memory, bandwidth, and CPU. Virtual scaling takes up less physical space and offers many advantages as opposed to hardware scaling.
Virtualization allows companies to reduce many costs related to the server system operations. According to Jayasinghe et al. (2014), the scalability of virtual systems is also highly elastic as it can easily adapt to the company’s needs. Moreover, the use of virtual servers allows companies to decrease electricity consumption. Many of the processes related to virtual servers can be automated as well, which offers workers an ability to perform other tasks. However, every company should consider both physical and virtual scalability in order to reach the best effects. According to Falatah and Batarfi (2014), companies should have a clear understanding of both processes in order to create an efficient system. For instance, researchers note that to achieve high scalability on a virtual server one has to account for many operations.
Virtualization should be perceived as an additional way of increasing efficiency. For instance, creating a solid hardware platform for a virtual system is a good way to incorporate both solutions. Vertical and horizontal scaling can significantly affect the server’s performance. Combining the company’s physical and virtual assets may prove to be the best way of increasing scalability. All in all, scalability is important in the process of creating virtualization solutions.
References
Falatah, M. M., & Batarfi, O. A. (2014). Cloud scalability considerations. International Journal of Computer Science and Engineering Survey, 5(4), 37-47.
Jayasinghe, D., Malkowski, S., Li, J., Wang, Q., Wang, Z., & Pu, C. (2014). Variations in performance and scalability: An experimental study in IaaS clouds using multi-tier workloads. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 7(2), 293-306.
Sajid, M., & Raza, Z. (2013). Cloud computing: Issues & challenges. In International conference on cloud, big data and trust (pp. 13-15). Bhopal, India: RGPV.