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The words host and guest are used to distinguish the software that runs on the physical machine from the software that runs on the virtual machine. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a hypervisor or virtual machine monitor. [2] Hardware virtualization is not the same as hardware emulation ...
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of the two.
The desire to run multiple operating systems was the initial motivation for virtual machines, so as to allow time-sharing among several single-tasking operating systems. In some respects, a system virtual machine can be considered a generalization of the concept of virtual memory that historically preceded it.
A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine , and each virtual machine is called a guest machine .
VMware Workstation supports bridging existing host network adapters and sharing physical disk drives and USB devices with a virtual machine. It can simulate disk drives; an ISO image file can be mounted as a virtual optical disc drive , and virtual hard disk drives are implemented as .vmdk files.
Resizing of disk image formats from Oracle, VDI (VirtualBox disk image), and Microsoft, VHD (Virtual PC hard disk) 4.1 Jul 19, 2011: Windows Aero support (experimental) Virtual machine cloning; 4.2 Sep 13, 2012: Virtual machine groups – allows management of a group of virtual machines as a single unit (power them on or off, take snapshots, etc.)
A virtual machine (VM) can be more easily controlled and inspected from a remote site than a physical machine, and the configuration of a VM is more flexible. This is very useful in kernel development and for teaching operating system courses, including running legacy operating systems that do not support modern hardware.
Oracle's Virtual Box has a Linux-based tool which allows the conversion of a dd image of an existing hard drive; Microsoft provides the SysInternals disk2vhd utility for making images from Windows XP or later systems to be used with Windows Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server or Hyper-V. openQRM, an open-source datacenter management platform ...