Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering virtualization technologies, hypervisor types, cloud computing models, deployment architectures, and modern cloud computing trends.

Virtualization

A technology that allows one physical computer or server to operate as multiple virtual systems, enabling a single physical machine to run several independent environments instead of using separate computers for every task.

Server Virtualization

A virtualization technology that divides one physical server into multiple virtual servers, commonly utilized in data centers.

Desktop Virtualization

A virtualization technology that allows users to access a desktop environment hosted on another computer or server.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

An infrastructure model where desktop environments and applications (such as Word, Slack, Adobe, and Catia) are hosted on a centralized physical server running a hypervisor and accessed remotely by client devices.

Storage Virtualization

A virtualization technology that combines storage from multiple physical devices (such as RAID and JBOD) through SAN switches into a unified virtualized storage pool.

Network Virtualization

A virtualization technology that creates logical networks independent of the underlying physical network hardware, using components like virtual switches (vSwitch) and virtual network interface cards (vNIC).

Application and Container Virtualization

A virtualization approach that allows applications to run in isolated or packaged environments, helping improve software portability and consistency.

Hypervisor

Software, firmware, or hardware-assisted software that creates and manages virtual machines by distributing the physical computer's resources (such as CPU, memory, and storage) among them.

Type 1 Hypervisor

A bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the host server hardware without a host operating system beneath it (examples include VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V).

Type 2 Hypervisor

A hosted hypervisor that runs on top of a conventional host operating system which sits on the bare-metal hardware (an example includes VirtualBox).

Cloud Computing

The delivery of on-demand computing resources—including servers, storage, databases, networking, and software—over a network (typically the internet), usually based on subscription or usage-based pricing.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

A cloud service model that provides on-demand computing infrastructure, including virtual servers, networks, and storage (examples include AWS EC2 and Azure Virtual Machines).

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

A cloud service model that provides a managed environment specifically for developing and deploying applications (an example includes Azure App Service).

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A cloud service model delivering ready-to-use applications accessed online over the internet (examples include Google Docs and Microsoft 365).

Public Cloud

A cloud deployment model where services and computing resources are delivered to multiple clients over a shared cloud infrastructure.

Private Cloud

A cloud deployment model where the cloud infrastructure is dedicated entirely to a single organization.

Hybrid Cloud

A cloud deployment model that integrates private infrastructure or on-premises data centers with public cloud resources.

Community Cloud

A cloud deployment model featuring infrastructure shared exclusively among multiple organizations that possess common requirements.

Virtual Machine (VM)

A software-based computer environment configured with allocated CPU, memory, storage, and virtual network resources that runs its own operating system and applications independently on a physical host.

Cloud Storage Services

Services that store files and data on provider-managed infrastructure, enabling remote authorized access, document sharing, scalable storage capacity, and configured backup and recovery.

Edge Computing

A distributed computing paradigm and future trend centered around processing data closer to where it is generated rather than routing it to centralized servers.

Serverless Computing

A cloud execution model and future trend where developers execute application code without managing or provisioning the underlying servers directly.

Containerization and Orchestration

A modern deployment trend focusing on packaging applications into lightweight containers and automating their provisioning, coordination, and scaling across infrastructure.