How innovaphone Navigates between Kubernetes, Containers and Hypervisors

written by Bernd Riedl and Cecília Camacho Riedl | April 28^th, 2025

A few decades ago, the use of computers was commonplace at companies in various sectors, but the internet was hardly ever used. The digital transformation first affected the corporate world, followed later by banks and public authorities. The driving force behind this change was the internet, software integration and, ultimately, virtualization technologies. Cost-effectiveness and speed became the driving parameters for increasing a company’s digital efficiency. The use of the cloud became increasingly important, particularly due to globalization and the resulting need for efficient collaboration between geographically distributed teams.

What Role do Kubernetes, Containers and Hypervisors Play in this Change?

Join us on an exciting journey through the world of IT as we navigate between Kubernetes, containers and hypervisors.

The History of Virtualization

The history of virtualization in IT is a fascinating journey spanning several decades and technological milestones. Its beginnings date back to the 1960s, when IBM took the first steps towards virtualization with its mainframe computers. Another important milestone occurred in 1979, when the developers of Unix introduced chroot, which made it possible to isolate a section of the file system from the rest^[1]. In the 1990s, virtualization was further developed with the introduction of hypervisors. A hypervisor is software that makes it possible to run several operating systems simultaneously on one physical host. VMware, founded in 1998, was one of the pioneers in this field and launched the first commercial x86 hypervisor in 1999.^[2] Another significant step in virtualization technology was the introduction of containers. In 2013, the company introduced its Docker container technology, which made it easier for developers to package and run applications in isolated environments^[3]&[4]. Docker containers share the kernel of the host operating system, which makes them more resource-efficient and faster than traditional virtual machines based on hypervisors.

The management and orchestration of containers was revolutionized by Kubernetes, which was developed by Google in 2014 and made open source by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2016. Kubernetes provides a platform for automating the deployment, scaling and management of container applications^[5].

These developments have fundamentally changed the IT landscape and now form the basis for modern cloud operations.

innovaphone has learned to navigate skilfully between these technologies in order to achieve maximum efficiency and flexibility with the own products.
 

How does Virtualization Generally Work?

Let us just try to illustrate how virtualization works in IT using a creative example. Imagine you have a group of children playing the game “musical chairs” with slightly different rules. The children run around a circle of chairs, but there are fewer chairs than children. On an acoustic signal, each child tries to sit on a free chair. The children who are unable to find an empty chair continue to run around the circle. At the next signal, the seated children stand up and make room for other children.

Let us transfer this game to virtualization in IT:

• Children represent the various applications that run on a computer.
• Chairs represent the physical resources of the computer (CPU, memory, hard disk, etc.)
• The acoustic signal (e.g. music) symbolizes the rhythm in which the resources are distributed by the virtualization software.

In a traditional setup without virtualization, each child (i.e. each application) would reserve its own chair (its own physical computer). This would be inefficient, as not all of a computer’s resources are usually fully utilized. With virtualization, on the other hand, several children (applications) can use the same chair (the same physical computer) at different times. The music (virtualization software) ensures that each child (each application) has enough space to sit and run. This allows more applications to run on less physical hardware, which increases the efficiency of the overall system and saves costs.

What do the Terms Kubernetes, Container and Hypervisor Mean?

A hypervisor is software that enables several virtual computers - also known as virtual machines (VMs) - to be operated on a host, i.e. a physical server. Each VM requires its own operating system and isolated resources such as CPU, memory and hard disk. A container infrastructure, on the other hand, does not virtualize the hardware of the server, but the operating system. Containers share the kernel of the host operating system and are therefore much “smaller” and easier to use than classic VMs.

Kubernetes helps an operator to automate the provision, scaling and management of containers. In this context, it is also referred to as container orchestration.

Dockers and Containers - Why the Maritime Metaphor?

A virtualized environment can contain hundreds or even thousands of containers, so intelligent orchestration of this system is imperative. The metaphor to the maritime sector quickly becomes clear: At a port, a central system is essential to register and manage the containers which are in circulation, providing important information such as weight, location or the ship they are loaded onto. Kubernetes is this central element for a container-based, virtualized environment.

What is the Objective of innovaphone?

For over 25 years, innovaphone has been offering its customers and partners a “Lego”-like modular system with which communication systems and productivity apps of all kinds can be built and operated. The spectrum ranges from large, distributed, replicating systems for multinational companies to fail-safe installations for SMBs and solutions in which an Internet provider can cost-effectively provide hundreds or thousands of small communication systems with 2 or 3 connections.

Depending on the specific requirements, the optimal platform can be selected to build an efficient, project-specific solution. Kubernetes and containers represent a far-reaching and new approach. In this context, innovaphone provides a completely preconfigured virtualization platform in addition to the familiar building blocks mentioned above. Among other things, this also contains tools that enable a geo-redundant setup. This is intended to achieve the following:

• Fast and efficient setup of a complete virtualization platform that allows a system integrator to create their own public cloud platform or an end customer to implement their own virtualized solution in their own network.
   
• To increase operational security, the virtualization platform can be set up in distributed and geographically separate units. Such a geo-redundant setup increases the availability of the complete system.
  
  
• Quick and easy automated provision of customer systems, within seconds. A customer system can be generated at the touch of a button, e.g. to demonstrate or test a special configuration. The instance is then simply deleted again to save time.
   
• Increased flexibility and easy scalability to add further resources to a platform during operation or to distribute them differently. This applies both to platforms set up with their own servers and to managed Kubernetes services, such as AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.
   
• A high level of isolation between individual customer systems improves the security of the overall system.
  
  
• Better use of resources and therefore greater efficiency in operation and operational costs.
  
  
• Security continues to be one of the most important topics for innovaphone. This aspect can only be touched on superficially here, due to its complexity. Isolated operation between individual containers, operational security through a redundancy concept, access security through a Reverse Proxy cluster, etc. are only a selection of the many integrated security mechanisms.
  
  
• All this can be administered via a graphical UI. The admin does not have to delve into the depths of cryptic Linux syntax.

KEY TAKEAWAY:

The world of virtualization is dynamic and has been growing since its beginnings in the 1960s. It has undergone transformations that have radically changed our everyday working lives. innovaphone is continuously utilizing these new possibilities and integrating them into its own system landscape. From hypervisors to containers and Kubernetes, innovaphone uses state-of-the-art technologies to create forward-looking solution modules for its customers and partners, in line with the claim “more than communication”!

Sources:

[1] Container virtualization, de.wikipedia.org
[2] Virtualization and Container, SCI Systems GmbH
[3] A Brief History of Containers, Aqua Security Software Ltd.
[4] Container Virtualization, Claranet GmbH
[5] Basics of Container Virtualization, cloudcomputing-insider.de