What is virtualization?
The act of creating a virtual version of something, such as a hardware platform, OS, storage, or network.
Virtualization uses software to simulate hardware functionality and create a virtual computer system. This allows IT organizations to run more than one virtual system—and multiple operating systems and applications—on a single server. This results in economies of scale and greater efficiency.
graph LR
Center["What is virtualization?"]:::main
Rel_hypervisor["hypervisor"]:::related -.-> Center
click Rel_hypervisor "/terms/hypervisor"
Rel_virtual_machine["virtual-machine"]:::related -.-> Center
click Rel_virtual_machine "/terms/virtual-machine"
Rel_caching["caching"]:::related -.-> Center
click Rel_caching "/terms/caching"
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🧠 Prueba de conocimiento
🧒 Explícalo como si tuviera 5 años
Virtualization is like having a magic computer that can pretend to be five different computers at once. Instead of buying five physical machines, you buy one powerful machine and use virtualization to split it into five parts. Each part thinks it's its own separate computer.
🤓 Expert Deep Dive
Hardware virtualization relies on a hypervisor to manage the abstraction layer between the physical hardware and the virtual machines (VMs). It enables features like sandboxing, snapshotting, and live migration, which are foundational for cloud computing and modern server management.