Summary

In this chapter, we have discussed the different types of virtualization, where type 1, also known as bare metal virtualization, provides the Hypervisor that can be directly accessed and installed in the hardware and with type 2, the Hypervisor installed in the operating system. One of the advantages of a type 1 solution is the fact that the Hypervisor directly installed in the hardware provides for improved performance; a drawback of this is the fact that the hardware has to integrate with the product's Hypervisor and you have to ensure that you check that it does so.

We looked at the different open source virtualization offerings that are possible, and we installed, configured basic settings, and created virtual machines in a number of tools. We downloaded and used an ISO image to create our virtual machine and booted the machine once it was created. Additionally, we downloaded the OWASP Broken Web Application Project virtual machine and used the existing configuration to run the machine.

We also looked at some of the commercial offerings with respect to virtualization, and it is here that we explained the reason why we will work with the virtualization product VMware Workstation from this point forward. Additionally, we discussed the powerful features of both the XenServer and vSphere products.

One of the challenges we face is taking old and existing machines and using them with the different virtualization offerings that are out there, so we discussed a tool from the group at Starwind Software that can be used to convert from VMDK to VHD files and VHD to VMDK files, and with the exception of some, conversions work extremely well.

We concluded this chapter with the concept of P2V, or physical to virtual conversion, which provides a way for us to take an existing or a new physical machine and convert it to a virtual one. In the next chapter, we will look at the challenge of planning and building our range.