Rather than directly defining terms like Virtualization and Hypervisors which are technical jargon basically. We will create a scenario that demands Virtualization and Hypervisors.
Say we have created an Application on our own Laptop. Let’s unpack things here.
We have a laptop — a physical machine and this machine is made up of physical components basically CPU, RAM, Storage, Network etc and Softwares like OS, Dependencies etc
Let us assume we use CPU-40%, RAM-50% for this application and we will leave Storage and Network for time being.
Let us sit back and see what we do here. We essentially run our application on a Single machine that has Single OS while CPU and RAM are underutilized. This is okay if it is solely for personal use. But every underutilized resource has potential revenue for Businesses and resources are limited and costly.
In this case, we need to find a way to use the rest 60% CPU and the rest 50% RAM so that my resources are utilized to the fullest potential. Let us look at the way out for this.
Constraints would be we can’t directly partition the physical components i.e CPU splitting, RAM splitting (lol). So it can be done only on the software side.
This software would split resources virtually but not physically. This software is called Hypervisors
A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor or VMM, is software that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs). A hypervisor allows one host computer to support multiple guest VMs by virtually sharing its resources, such as memory and processing.
Hypervisors create many machines virtually called Virtual Machines from single physical hardware. The resources of hardware are shared across virtual machines. Do remember each virtual machines are independent of one another and can be networked.
This whole concept is called Virtualization.
Virtualization is technology that lets you create useful IT services using resources that are traditionally bound to hardware. It allows you to use a physical machine’s full capacity by distributing its capabilities among many users or environments. … It’s the same hardware, you’re just using more of it more efficiently
So Virtualization is a technology and hypervisor is software that enables them.
When you understand the problem, you solved half of the problem. Here the problem is Resources utilization and efficiency and the solution is Virtualization
