Physical/Virtual Server
| 1. A physical server is a piece of equipment utilised by the organisation to perform operations. Using an operating system or software, multiple virtual servers can be created from one physical server allowing multiple operations to be performed from a single piece of equipment.
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2.
Physical Server:
The architecture of a physical server is quite plain. Each server has its own hardware: Memory, network, processing and storage resources. On this hardware, the server operating system is loaded. From the OS you can then run the applications. Pretty straight-forward.
Virtual Server:
With a virtual infrastructure, you have the same physical server with all the resources, but instead of the server operating system, there’s a hypervisor such as vSphere or Hyper-V loaded on it. The hypervisor is where you actually create your virtual machines. As you can see on the diagram, each VM has its own virtual devices – virtual CPU, virtual memory, virtual network interface cards and its own virtual disk. On top of this virtual hardware you load a guest operating system and then your traditional server applications.
Source: (Vanover, 2017)
3.
Physical Server:
A physical server is piece of equipment on which data is stored and read. This may be located onsite in your server room, or it could be stored at a colocation facility (a data center) with a trusted vendor. Physical servers are generally owned, managed, and maintained by your company's staff.
Virtual Server:
Virtualization is the act of placing multiple "virtual servers" on physical equipment. This allows physical server resources to be split between multiple workloads for maximum efficiency and cost savings. Virtualization typically occurs in the cloud or on servers that are owned, maintained, and located offsite. Hiring a hosting vendor who offers secure cloud services is the most common way that organizations switch to virtualization.
Source: (Collins, 2016)