Has virtualization become obsolete in 5G?

Sat Aug 1 18:19:13 UTC 2020

An operating system is just a high-level machine. That the M-plane in VM is implemented in software isn’t relevant, as pretty much all hardware CPUs are implemented in software as well, so VM is just virtualizing software already.

Containerization is VM, but using the OS as the M-plane As long as the OS delivers all the functions needed by applications, it’s a perfectly reasonable, and even preferable, plane to virtualize.

 -mel

On Aug 1, 2020, at 11:12 AM, Etienne-Victor Depasquale <edepa at ieee.org> wrote:

Clearly to virtualize operating systems as long as your level of virtualization mainly in terms of security and resource consumption isolation & reservation is satisfactory is a much better and lighter option.

That pretty much sums up Intel's view.

To quote an Intel executive I was corresponding with:

"The purpose of the paper was to showcase how Communication Service Providers can move to a more nimble and future proof microservices based network architecture with cloud native functions, via container deployment methodologies versus virtual machines.  The paper cites many benefits of moving to a microservices architecture beyond whether it is done in a VM environment or cloud native. We believe the 5G networks of the future will benefit greatly by implementing such an approach to deploying new services."

The paper referred to is this one<https://www.intel.in/content/www/in/en/communications/why-containers-and-cloud-native-functions-paper.html>.

Cheers,

Etienne

On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 6:23 PM Robert Raszuk <robert at raszuk.net<mailto:robert at raszuk.net>> wrote:
I reason that Intel's implication is that virtualization is becoming obsolete.
Would anyone care to let me know his thoughts on this prediction?

Virtualization is not becoming obsolete ... quite reverse in fact in all types of deployments I can see around.

The point is that VM provides hardware virtualization while kubernetes with containers virtualize OS apps and services are running on in isolation.

Clearly to virtualize operating systems as long as your level of virtualization mainly in terms of security and resource consumption isolation & reservation is satisfactory is a much better and lighter option.

Thx,
R.

--
Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
Assistant Lecturer
Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
University of Malta
Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale
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