Trends in Virtualisation – AVANTEC

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Already in the 2000s, some companies recognised that a lot of money could be saved through virtualisation. Besides the financial advantage, the technology also offers well-known benefits such as space savings in the data centre, a faster time-to-market since new hardware does not have to be procured for every system, as well as a more efficient and flexible use of resources, as these can be very granularly adjusted on a hypervisor solution. Classic virtualisation with hypervisor is nothing new to us; we have all been working with it for many years. But where are virtualisation solutions heading and what are the technology trends? Virtualisation On-Premise The virtualisation operated in-house has not changed significantly in recent years. Cloud technologies, on the other hand, have developed considerably more over the same period. Services like VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V still basically work the same as they did a few years ago. The network segment looks similar: virtual networks are indispensable in everyday life, but the basic range of functions has hardly changed. In 2010, Cisco adopted RFC 5517 for private VLANs, which has since allowed another virtualisation layer to be implemented. In practice, however, this is rarely encountered. With solutions like Docker, a gateway opened in 2013 for application development with containerised development, to write and further develop software in a highly flexible way. Meanwhile, besides the market leader, many other solutions are known, including Kubernetes and OpenShift. The situation is different with innovations in the cloud environment. Cloud In the world of cloud, a lot has changed in recent years. Even companies in the financial sector, which are usually run more conservatively, now rely on a "Cloud First" strategy. When I was still working in the financial sector in 2015, such a thing would have been hardly imaginable. Many companies prefer cloud-native applications and architectures more than ever. AI and automation, zero trust security, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, SASE – familiar buzzwords? Cloud computing is currently a booming industry in which companies are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible. A very current and, in my opinion, exciting solution is the idea of SASE. The functions and details of this approach have already been discussed several times on this blog, so I would like to link to two particularly exciting articles here: https://www.tec-bite.ch/wohin-die-it-security-reise-geht-teil3-sase/ https://www.tec-bite.ch/an-sase-kommen-sie-nicht-vorbei-7-tipps-fuer-ihr-projekt/ SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) has the potential to fundamentally change the corporate world, especially with regard to remote work, primarily by eliminating the need for conventional VPNs. Our recent internal tests have shown that connecting to, for example, Check Point Harmony SASE can reduce latency many times over. ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) has been a hot topic for several years. I will not go into it further here, as there are already various articles on our blog covering the topic. AI has been inseparable from buzzwords since the public release of ChatGPT in 2022. Many manufacturers have integrated an AI assistant into their products in recent years and especially this year. With AI, I am somewhat digressing from the actual topic of virtualisation. But here too, it is evident that many of the services require a connection to the cloud, where the systems are highly virtualised. Conclusion As is easy to see, the IT world is evolving towards the cloud. While 10 to 15 years ago it was handled much more cautiously and reservedly, various cloud solutions are now advancing at breakneck speed. No one wants to miss the train. Classic virtualisation, as we already know it from the well-known hypervisor technologies, has only experienced small evolutions in recent years. The focus is on cloud solutions and, in my opinion, that is a good thing. Many of the mentioned solutions offer – if implemented properly – a high degree of protection for the company. Nevertheless, an organisation does not lose flexibility; in many cases, the degree of flexibility even increases. Further links www.tec-bite.ch/wer-braucht-heute-noch-vms/ www.tec-bite.ch/virtuelle-smart-cards-geht-das/ www.tec-bite.ch/ztna-zero-trust-network-access-ist-ein-konzept-und-kein-produkt/ The article Trends in Virtualisation first appeared on Tec-Bite.