Cloud, DevOps and Open Source

What are Hypervisors?

Satish Sutar's photo
Satish Sutar
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3 min read

Table of contents

Hypervisors, also known as virtual machine monitors (VMMs), are software programs that enable virtualization. They create and manage virtual machines, which allow multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine, making it an essential technology for cloud computing, server consolidation, and application development. In this article, we'll discuss the types of hypervisors and their history.

Types of Hypervisors

There are two primary types of hypervisors:

Type 1, and

Type 2.

Type 1 Hypervisors

Type 1 hypervisors, also called bare-metal hypervisors, run directly on the host machine's hardware. They have direct access to physical resources and control the hardware, making them very efficient. They create virtual machines that are independent of the host operating system and can run guest operating systems with minimal overhead.

Examples of type 1 hypervisors include:

  1. VMware ESXi - a popular hypervisor that is known for its reliability, robustness, and excellent performance.

  2. Microsoft Hyper-V - a hypervisor included in Microsoft Windows Server that provides virtualization capabilities for Windows-based servers.

  3. KVM - a Linux-based hypervisor that is open-source and included in the Linux kernel.

Type 2 Hypervisors

Type 2 hypervisors, also called hosted hypervisors, run on an operating system as an application like any other program. They rely on the host operating system to manage hardware resources, which means that they are less efficient than type 1 hypervisors. They create virtual machines that run as applications of the host operating system.

Examples of type 2 hypervisors include:

  1. Oracle VirtualBox - a freely available hypervisor that runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris.

  2. VMware Workstation - a commercial hypervisor that runs on Windows and Linux and is designed for desktop virtualization.

  3. Parallels Desktop - a commercial hypervisor that runs on macOS and is used primarily for running Windows applications on a Mac.

History of Hypervisors

Hypervisors have been around since the late 1960s. IBM developed the first hypervisor, called CP-40, for its mainframe computers. This hypervisor enabled multiple operating systems to run on a single mainframe.

In the 1990s, hypervisors became popular for server consolidation, which involved running multiple applications on a single server. Hypervisors made it possible to create isolated environments for each application, improving server utilization and reducing costs.

Today, hypervisors are widely used for cloud computing, the internet of things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI). They enable efficient resource utilization, flexibility, and security, making them essential for modern computing.

Summary

Hypervisors are software programs that allow for virtualization, creating and managing virtual machines.

There are two primary types of hypervisors:

Type 1 and

Type 2.

Type 1 hypervisors run directly on host machine hardware, while Type 2 hypervisors run on an operating system as an application like any other program.

Hypervisors have been around since the late 1960s, providing improvements in server utilization and reducing costs. Today, hypervisors are widely used for cloud computing, IoT and AI.

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