Why do people virtualize the hardware and OS? Shouldn't it be a software architectural thing? That's why we have web clusters, load balancers, content-based c

Why do people virtualize the hardware and OS? Shouldn't it be a software architectural thing? That's why we have web clusters, load balancers, content-based caches, database clusters, distributed hash tables etc and not big iron mainframe style partitions. Look at Google! I am slightly biased against this as I run a large ESX deployment with about 100 virtual hosts. Performance sucks compared to native and it purely shifts the management effort from one concern to another saving a grand total of nothing. Blades however have some credibility. Usually by now someone mentions security to which a certain Mr Theo De Raadt concisely debunks: "x86 virtualization is about basically placing another nearly full kernel, full of new bugs, on top of a nasty x86 architecture which barely has correct page protection. Then running your operating system on the other side of this brand new pile of shit. You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."