Software Defined Networking

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) is an architectural framework created by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) It defines standards to decouple network functions from proprietary hardware-based appliances and have them ran in software instead on standard servers. It defines how to manage and orchestrate the network functions. Network function refers to a function performance by…

A virtual switch, or vSwitch, is a software based Layer-2 switch that operates like a physical ethernet switch. A vSwitch allows virtual machines to communicate with each other within a virtual network and with external physical networks through the physical network interface cards (pNICs). Multiple vSwitches can be created under a virtualised server but network…

A container is an isolated environment where a containerised application runs. A container contains the application with the dependencies the application needs to run. Even though they have many similarities to virtual machines, containers are not the same as virtual machines. A virtual machine requires an operating system, but all containers share the same operating…

A virtual machine (VM) is a software emulation of a physical server with an operating system. From the applications point of view, the virtual machine provides the look and feel of a real physical machine including all its hardware components. The virtualisation software that creates the VMs and performs the hardware virtualisation is known as…

One of the main drivers for server virtualisation was server hardware was being underutilised. Physical servers were running a single operating system with a single application and using very little CPU. VMs and containers increase this overall efficiency and cost-effectiveness of a server by maximising the use of available resources.