Virtualization vs Containerization: Understanding The Differences

With the constantly evolving technologies in the digital space, businesses are relying on domain and hosting services for improved website performance and user experience.

Among the different web hosting plans, Linux VPS Hosting is one of the popular choices, given its virtual flexibility and ease of adoption for increased operational efficiency. However, are you aware of the concept of virtualization and containerization regarding better web hosting?

Between virtualization vs containerization, the main aspect of these technologies is to aid businesses in running different types of applications or dividing workloads in their distinctive way using a single physical server.

Let us discuss the concepts of virtualization and containerization in detail below.

What is Virtualization?

When it comes to web hosting, virtualization is a technology that permits users to use a single physical server to carry out tasks of numerous virtual servers together. Under this, different operating systems can efficiently be run together using hypervisors.

Hypervisors, also called virtual machine monitors, facilitate a functional environment for virtual machines by directly connecting to hardware resources like storage, memory space, etc., to segregate separate virtual environments.

In simple words, virtualization is a technology that allows multiple separate computer systems to function together using one physical computer alone. 

Each of these computers is called a virtual machine, and they operate alone on individual operating systems to perform different functions on various software types.

Advantages of Virtualization 

1. It is a cost-effective solution for businesses to allow them easy solutions to keep up with the increasing processing and storage needs.
2. All the virtual machines are separate and have their hardware resources to function, allowing them to perform independently.
3. Provides businesses with vital contingency planning and quicker resolution in times of emergencies.
4. This technology simplifies the data management processes by providing central management opportunities.
5. An effective strategy to improve IT-related efficiency and productivity for businesses as it allows developers to maintain the performance of use applications while keeping their infrastructure intact. 

What is Containerization?

Containerization is a technology that works towards increasing the operational efficiency of applications by systematically streamlining different workflows and reducing the potential gaps in the infrastructure that can cause interruption.

It segments applications into separate containers running in a different environment but using only one operating system. 

In simple words, containerization is packing up each application in a different container with all the relevant resources to keep its operations running. 

All the different containers use only one base operating system, making this technology extremely efficient and easy to adopt without much pressure.

Advantages of Containerization 

1. With the help of containerization, businesses can benefit from increased operational efficiency as it works towards reducing overheads by utilizing the available resources in the most effective way possible.
2. The ability of containerization to bundle all the relevant dependencies together allows ease of portability for the applications without creating a new environment each time for different locations. 
3. All the different containers are completely isolated, making it a more secure environment to carry out applications. This is because the impact of one container will have no negative after-effect on the other containers on the same web host.
4. Containerization promotes ease of switching from physical to virtual working environments for applications as they are already well equipped with the codes and system requirements to go online or offline whenever required.

Final Thoughts

Between virtualization and containerization, both technologies are functional, using similar characteristics but with opposing outcomes.

Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines to perform using a single physical server, while containerization divides applications into separate containers on the same operating system for individual performance.

On the one hand, virtualization helps save on infrastructure costs by creating virtual machines on the same host. On the other hand, containerization allows easy bundling of applications using sufficient resources for each.