Virtualization

Virtualization terms

1. AMD-V (AMD Virtualization) AMD's version of virtualization assist, included in some 64-bit AMD processors. See also Virtualization Assist.
2. application program See application.
3. application-level partitioning See operating system partitioning.
4. Atropos One of the CPU schedulers provided by Xen. Atropos provides domains with absolute shares of the CPU, with timeliness guarantees and a mechanism for…
5. Autonomic Computing An approach to self-managed computing systems with a minimum of human interference.
6. bare metal environment installing a virtualization hypervisor as the first layer of software on a system, before any operating system. Compare to hosted environment.
7. bare-metal The term bare-metal refers to the underlying physical architecture of a computer.
8. binding The ability of molecules to bind each other non-covalently because of the exact shape and chemical nature of parts of their surfaces.
9. blade Usually a part of an excavator which digs and pushes dirt but does not carry it.
10. blade server a rack-mounted chassis which accepts multiple modularized server blades and provides shared network and power resources, resulting in high server density…
11. BT (Binary Translation) Technique used by virtualization softwares to translate instruction set guest OSes send to virtual hardware in instruction set understandable by physical…
12. business continuity An organization's ability to continue to operate in the event of a disaster or disruption See also disaster recovery plan.
13. BVT (Borrowed Virtual Time) The BVT scheduler is used to give proportional fair shares of the CPU to domains.
14. capacity planning The process of determining which one of the 12 million potential configuration options on AWS a user should choose to optimize operations.
15. ccNUMA (cache coherent Non-Uniform Memory Access) describes a NUMA architecture in which the system ensures that data stored in processor caches is coherent across all nodes.
16. Checkpoint Event or point in time during the program before which decision criteria must be met.
17. Clone An exact genetic replica of a specific gene or an entire organism. See Cloning.
18. clone, cloning A duplicate of a Virtual Machine.
19. cluster Clusters are fixed length blocks of bytes that store data for Microsoft operating systems.
20. cluster complete resource A managed object that represents wither a single host or a cluster of hosts available for backing virtual machines.
21. Clustering Connecting two or more computers together in such a way that they appear to be a single computing resource.
22. compact An agreement between states apportioning the water of a river basin to each of the signatory states.
23. Console A scroll-shaped projecting bracket that supports a horizontal member.
24. Converter A device for transforming the quality and quantity of electrical energy; also an inverter.
25. CPU (Central Processing Unit) The primary silicon chip that runs a computers operating system and application software.
26. data center A facility that provides a suitable environment (power, cooling, network connectivity, management services) for housing information technology equipment…
27. differencing virtual hard disk A virtual hard disk that stores the changes to an associated parent virtual hard disk for the purpose of keeping the parent intact.
28. dom0 Also known as the Host or host operating system. dom0 refers to the host instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux running the Hypervisor which facilitates…
29. Domain A sub-network of servers and computers within a LAN. Domain information is useful when restoring backup tapes, particularly of email.
30. domain 0 The first domain to be started on a Xen machine. Domain 0 is responsible for managing the system.
31. domain ID A unique identifier for a domain, analogous to a process ID in an operating system.
32. domains domU and Domains are both domains. Domains run on the Hypervisor. The term domains has a similar meaning to Virtual machines and the two are technically…
33. domu domU refers to the guest operating system which run on the host system (Domains).
34. DR (Disaster Recovery) In virtual environments the setup of new systems and recovery of operating systems are much simpler than with standard recovery methods.
35. dynamically expanding virtual hard disk A virtual hard disk that grows in size each time it is modified. This type of virtual hard disk starts as a 3 KB .
36. emulation presenting a facsimile of a resource which is not present to a consumer so that it is not aware of the resources absence, allowing the consumer to exist…
37. encapsulated (en-KAP-soo-lay-ted) Confined to a specific, localized area and surrounded by a thin layer of tissue.
38. exokernel A minimal piece of privileged code, similar to a microkernel but providing a more 'hardware-like' interface to the tasks it manages.
39. five nines a percentage of availability of a given computer system wherein the systems is available 99.999% of the time. This is equivalent to 5.
40. fixed-size virtual hard disk A virtual hard disk with a fixed size that is determined and for which all space is allocated when the disk is created.
41. Full Clone A copy of the original virtual machine that has no further dependence on the parent virtual machine. See also Linked Clone.
42. Full Screen Mode A mode of operation in which a virtual machine's display occupies the host computer's entire screen. See also Normal (Windowed) Mode.
43. full virtualization You can deploy Red Hat Virtualization in one of two choices: full virtualization or para-virtualization.
44. fully virtualized See Full virtualization.
45. Grid Computing The use of pools of resources onto which applications or services may be dynamically provisioned and re-provisioned to meet the goals of one or more…
46. Growable Disk A type of virtual disk in which only as much host disk space as is needed is initially set aside, and the disk grows as the virtual machine uses the space.
47. Guest A virtual machine running within VMware Workstation. See also Virtual Machine.
48. guest operating system The operating system running on a virtual machine.
49. Guest OS (Operating System) in a hosted environment, the operating system running in a virtual machine created on top of the host operating system and supported by the virtualization…
50. guest system Also known as guests, virtual machines or domU.
51. HA (High Availability) A combination of technology, processes, and support partnerships that provide greater application or system availability.
52. HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) A layer between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer designed to hide differences in the underlying hardware…
53. hardware virtual machine See Full virtualization
54. hardware virtualization This technology was the starting point of the virtualization movement. Originally, the x86-architecture did not support virtualization.
55. Hardware Virtualization Assist See Virtualization Assist.
56. hardware-independence by virtualizing the underlying hardware that an operating system interacts with, and with the proper virtual machine monitor and hypervisor, the operating…
57. Hardware-level virtualization See full virtualization.
58. headless Describes a program or application that runs in the background without any interface connected to it.
59. high-level language virtual machine virtualization implemented as an application program on top of an operating system.
60. High-level language virtual machines In high-level language virtual machines, the virtualization layer sits as an application program on top of an operating system.
61. host In a network, the central computer which controls the remote computers and holds the central databases.
62. Host OS (Operating System) the operating system first installed on a computer which can run virtualization software to host one or more virtual machines.
63. Host System (or Host) A computer system on which VMware Workstation software is running.
64. Host-Only Networking A type of network connection between a virtual machine and the host. Under host-only networking, a virtual machine is connected to the host on a private…
65. hosted environment installing virtualization software on top of an existing standard operating system to provide services for one or more virtual machines.
66. Hosted Virtualization A virtualization approach where partitioning and virtualization services run on top of a standard operating system (the host).
67. Hyper-Threading A processor architecture feature that allows a single processor to execute multiple independent threads simultaneously.
68. hyperthreading See simultaneous multithreading.
69. hypervisor A hypervisor, sometimes referred to as a virtualization manager, is a program that allows multiple operating systems which can include different operating…
70. I/O Input/Output .
71. I/O virtualization presenting storage and networking resources to virtual machines through an emulated layer to provide hardware independence and portability.
72. Independent Virtual Disk Independent virtual disks are not included in snapshots. Independent virtual disks can in turn be either Persistent or Nonpersistent.
73. industry standard architecture See x86 architecture.
74. infrastructure An basic underlying framework or features of a system.
75. integration services A collection of services and software drivers that maximize performance and provide a better user experience within a virtual machine.
76. Intel architecture See x86 architecture.
77. Isolated A National Weather Service convective precipitation descriptor for a 10 percent chance of measurable precipitation (0.01 inch).
78. Itanium The Intel Itanium® processor architecture.
79. Kernel A module of a program that forms a logical entity or performs a unit function. Note: The most vulnerable portion of code in a secure operating system is a…
80. kernel-based virtual machine KVM is a Full virtualization kernel module which will be incorporated into future releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
81. key-value pair A set of data items that contains a unique identifier, called a key, and a value that is the actual data for the key.
82. Linked Clone A copy of the original virtual machine that must have access to the parent virtual machine's virtual disk(s).
83. live backup copying an encapsulated virtual machine, while powered on, from outside of the context of the virtual machine, for archiving purposes.
84. live migration moving a virtual machine, while powered on, from one physical system to another without interruption of the service it provides.
85. Load Balancing Referring to the ability to redistribute load (read/write requests) to an alternate path between server and storage device, load balancing helps to…
86. logical processor a hyperthreading CPU present itself as multiple logical CPUs to the operating system so that the OS will schedule threads on all of the logical CPUs…
87. LUN (Logical Unit Number) A unique identifier used on a SCSI bus to distinguish between devices that share the same bus.
88. MAC Addresses The Media Access Control Address is the hardware address for a Network Interface Controller.
89. Management Console Allows clients to access and manage AWS through a user-friendly interface. With this console, users can see all AWS services in one place, manage their…
90. microkernel A small base of code running at the highest hardware privilege level. A microkernel is responsible for sharing CPU and memory (and sometimes other…
91. migration Moving files to another computer application or platform; may require conversion to a different format.
92. multitasking The concurrent performance or interleaved execution of two or more tasks. Synonym concurrent operation.
93. multithreading the ability of an operating system or program to spawn multiple simultaneous execution paths (in addition to its main thread of execution) to more…
94. NAS (Network Attached Storage) NAS provides storage resources to servers and workstations over a shared or dedicated network.
95. NAT (Network Address Translation) A type of network connection that allows you to connect your virtual machines to an external network when you have only one IP network address, and that…
96. Native Execution Execution of an application directly on a physical server, as contrasted with running the application in a virtual machine.
97. Native System A computer running a single operating system, and in which the applications run directly in that operating system.
98. NetBSD/Xen A port of NetBSD to the Xen architecture.
99. network virtualization Network virtualization is a method of combining the available resources in a network by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels, each of which…
100. node Any device connected to network. PCs, servers, and printers are all nodes on the network.