Grade 11 · Theory
Virtual machines and virtualisation
Software · about 4 min
Visual overview: Virtual machines and virtualisation1 MIN READ
2 study sections · pause after each one and recall the key ideaVirtualisation lets one physical computer act as several independent "virtual" computers, each with its own OS — the technology underneath cloud computing.
Key points- A hypervisor allocates the real CPU, RAM and storage to each virtual machine (VM).
- Benefits: better hardware utilisation, isolation (a crashed VM doesn't sink the host), easy backup/cloning, safe testing of software or malware.
- You can run a different OS inside a VM (e.g. Linux VM on a Windows PC).
- Data centres rent VMs to customers — that is the core of IaaS cloud services.
- Cost: some performance overhead and licensing complexity.
- Virtual machine — a software-emulated computer running on a physical host.
- Hypervisor — the layer that creates and manages VMs.
EXAM TIP
give two benefits of virtualisation for a business (server consolidation, isolation, disaster recovery) with a sentence each.