Introduction to virtualization & containers

This is an introduction to virtualization - hypervisors, virtual machines (VMs), and also containers. Virtualization has become a transformative technology for several reasons highlighted in the video, both in terms of cost savings, but also flexibility in deployment and application usage. Containers - essentially Linux name spaces - build upon the same idea of virtualization with a mix of benefits (low resource usage per deployment, fast to deploy) and limitations (their primarily Linux based and confined). I'm including several links for reference that I've found helpful and hope you can as well.

• Setup QEMU KVM in Linux - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation
  https://linuxconfig.org/install-and-set-up-kvm-on-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-linux
• VMware ESXi - https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi7
  To run the free version of ESXi you need to register an account and setup a test user account. More enterprise-level features like HA and so on are available with vSphere and vCenter licenses.
• Docker - https://www.docker.com/
• Intro to Docker from Network Chuck - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGz9DS-aIeY
  This is a pretty good overview of the advantages and command line tips - still a ton to learn and explore with the platform
• Podman and RedHat openshift - https://podman.io/
  https://www.openshift.com/
• Kubernetes vs Docker - https://containerjournal.com/topics/container-ecosystems/kubernetes-vs-docker-a-primer/
  https://www.sumologic.com/blog/kubernetes-vs-docker/

I think virtualization is pretty straightforward beyond the inner workings of a hypervisor itself. Install a hypervisor, figure out how to create and access VMs and away you go. Containers - though I don't touch on much in the video are interesting, but complex in how to deploy, manage, and use. I attribute a lot of this to the maturity difference between the the technologies, and the underlying complexity of running sandboxed services on a single kernel vs just creating an environment to install wholly independent systems on. 

Ideally when deploying an IT backend, both technologies would and do get used where needed. Having an understanding of both is important for those looking to get into IT or infrastructure workloads for the foreseeable future. 

Hope it helps, leave a comment if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments.