Virtulations

Hypervisor

 

What is a hypervisor?

A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor or VMM, is software that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs). A hypervisor allows one host computer to support multiple guest VMs by virtually sharing its resources, such as memory and processing

Why use a hypervisor?

Hypervisors make it possible to use more of a system’s available resources and provide greater IT mobility since the guest VMs are independent of the host hardware. This means they can be easily moved between different servers. Because multiple virtual machines can run off of one physical server with a hypervisor, a hypervisor reduces: 

• Space
• Energy
• Maintenance requirement

Types of hypervisors

There are two main hypervisor types, referred to as “Type 1” (or “bare metal”) and “Type 2” (or “hosted”). A type 1 hypervisor acts like a lightweight operating system and runs directly on the host’s hardware, while a type 2 hypervisor runs as a software layer on an operating system, like other computer programs. 

Benefits of hypervisors

There are several benefits to using a hypervisor that hosts multiple virtual machines: 

• Speed: Hypervisors allow virtual machines to be created instantly, unlike bare-metal servers. This makes it easier to provision resources as needed for dynamic workloads. 
• Efficiency: Hypervisors that run several virtual machines on one physical machine’s resources also allow for more efficient utilization of one physical server. It is more cost- and energy-efficient to run several virtual machines on one physical machine than to run multiple underutilized physical machines for the same task.
• Flexibility: Bare-metal hypervisors allow operating systems and their associated applications to run on a variety of hardware types because the hypervisor separates the OS from the underlying hardware, so the software no longer relies on specific hardware devices or drivers. 
• Portability: Hypervisors allow multiple operating systems to reside on the same physical server (host machine). Because the virtual machines that the hypervisor runs are independent from the physical machine, they are portable. IT teams can shift workloads and allocate networking, memory, storage and processing resources across multiple servers as needed, moving from machine to machine or platform to platform. When an application needs more processing power, the virtualization software allows it to seamlessly access additional machines