Quiz Of The Week: Virtually VMware

Virtualisation is the technology behind the cloud and underpins pretty much all modern business, but as VMware has its VMworld event this week, we want to know what it is, how it got so widespread…  and how come VMware is at the centre of it?

The concept goes way back into the history of computer science: programming languages take a problem and map it onto your given hardware. But what if you had a layer of software that hid the complexity of the hardware, so every program seemed to have a machine to itself? That’s the software that lets any physical server support multiple virtual machines.

I wanna get virtual!

Fifteen years ago, VMware brought this idea to industry standard servers, and it rapidly became obvious that virtualisation allowed firms to consolidate all their IT onto a smaller number of physical servers, making things more efficient inside a business.

At the same time, these virtual machines could be offered as a service remotely, giving people access to computer resources a they need them… and the cloud was born.

Virtualisation products followed from Microsoft, as well as the open source offerings Xen and KVM.

But it didn’t stop there. Other hardware can be masked and simplified with a virtual layer, giving rise to virtual storage and virtual networks… and the combination of these thins is the software-defined data centre.

This year VMware celebrated 15 years pushing the virtualisation concept forward, along with a host of partners and rivals. We thought it was high time for a Friday quiz on the subject.

So, how’s your virtualisation knowledge?

Take our VMware quiz!

And if you like it, try some of our others…