Cloud Computing

 Unit 2 : Virtual Machines Provisioning and Migration Services - Question Bank Describe the typical life cycle of a virtual machine (VM) in virtual and cloud environments. What are the major states of operation for a VM? Explain the VM provisioning process. What are the steps involved in provisioning a virtual server? What factors are considered when selecting a server from a pool of available servers for VM provisioning? How is the appropriate OS template selected? How is the software loaded onto a virtual machine during the provisioning process? What components are typically included (e.g., operating system, device drivers, middleware, applications)? Discuss the customization and configuration of a virtual machine during provisioning. What settings can be customised, such as IP address and gateway? How are associated network and storage resources configured? What are the different methods of provisioning a virtual machine? Explain manual installation, VM templates, cloning, and i...

Migration service, in the context of virtual machines, is the process of moving a virtual machine from one host server or storage location to another; there are different techniques of VM migration, hot/life migration, cold/regular migration, and live storage migration of a virtual machine. In process of migration, all key machines’ components, such as CPU, storage disks, networking, and memory, are completely virtualized, thereby facilitating the entire state of a virtual machine to be captured by a set of easily moved data files. 2.2.1. Migrations Techniques Live Migration and High Availability Live migration (which is also called hot or real-time migration) can be defined as the movement of a virtual machine from one physical host to another while being powered on.  Live migration process takes place without any noticeable effect from the end user’s point of view (a matter of milliseconds).  One of the most significant advantages of live migration is the fact that it facili...

  Steps to Provision VM. Here, we describe the common and normal steps of provisioning a virtual server: Firstly, you need to select a server from a pool of available servers (physical servers with enough capacity) along with the appropriate OS template you need to provision the virtual machine. Secondly, you need to load the appropriate software (operating system you selected in the previous step, device drivers, middleware, and theneeded applications for the service required). Thirdly, you need to customize and configure the machine (e.g., IP address, Gateway) to configure an associated network and storage resources. Finally, the virtual server is ready to start with its newly loaded software. These are the tasks required or being performed by an IT or a data center’s specialist to provision a particular virtual machine.

In this section, we will have an overview on the typical life cycle of VM and its major possible states of operation, which make the management and automation of VMs in virtual and cloud environments easier than in traditional computing environments As shown in Figure above, the cycle starts by a request delivered to the IT department, stating the requirement for creating a new server for a particular service.  IT administration to start seeing the servers’ resource pool, matching these resources with the requirements, and starting the provision of the needed virtual machine.  Once provisioned machine started, it is ready to provide the required service according to an SLA, or a time period after which the virtual is being released.