Intro to Virtual Machines

August 5, 2024

In this extremely short article on virtual machines we cover what a a virtual machine is and what a hypervisor is. We briefly go over different types of virtual machines, etc. Let’s dive!

What is a Virtual Machine?

Virtual machines are virtual computers that run on a physical machine. They are virtual environments for containerizing not just applications, but entire hosts. Virtual machines come in two main types, bare-metal machines (also known as Type 1 machines) and host OS based machines (also known as Type 2 machines). Host OS based virtual machines depend on a host operating system to run whereas bare-metal machines do not depend on an underlying host OS to run. However unlike containerization software such as docker which shares the host operating system’s kernel, virtual machines, even host OS based virtual machines do not borrow from the host operating system.

What is Hypervisor?

A hypervisor or a virtualiser creates and monitors the virtual machines. In host OS based virtual machines the hypervisor runs on top of the host’s operating system, this is the extent to which a host OS based virtual machine depends upon the host operating system.

In Type 1 virtual machines the hypervisor manages the underlying computer infrastructure entirely and manages distributing the resources between each virtual machine. In Type 2 virtual machines or host OS based virtual machines the underlying host’s operating system manages the underlying computer infrastructure and the hypervisor then manages distributing resources between the dependent virtual machines. The hypervisor in a Type 2 virtual machine setup is limited to the performance of the underlying OS.

Wrap Up

This article wouldn’t be complete without listing a few hypervisors / virtual machines out there. Probably the most popular is VMWare which is a Type 1 virtualizer and VMWare Workstation which is a Type 2 virtualizer, both are proprietary and require paid licenses for the full versions. There is also Hyper-V and Hyper-V WMI from Microsoft, both are proprietary. Finally, I love open source so I saved this one for last, there is Oracle VirtualBox which is entirely free and is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.

Also check out my tutorial on Installing Oracle VirtualBox on Debian based systems!

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful!

Walter Miely is a tech entrepreneur and CEO of Phoenix Ignited Tech You can find him on Linkedin. This material is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 License LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The content provided here is provided AS IS, and part of, or the entirety of this content may be incorrect. Please read the entireLegal Disclaimer here.

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Intro to Virtual Machines