Virtual Machine

A virtual machine (VM) is an emulation of a computer system. Put simply, it makes it possible to run what appear to be many separate computers on hardware that is actually one computer.

The operating systems (OS) and their applications share hardware resources from a single host server, or from a pool of host servers. Each VM requires its own underlying OS, and the hardware is virtualized. A hypervisor, or a virtual machine monitor, is software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs VMs. It sits between the hardware and the virtual machine and is necessary to virtualize the server.

Since the advent of affordable virtualization technology and cloud computing services, IT departments large and small have embraced virtual machines (VMs) as a way to lower costs and increase efficiencies.

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