Basics of Server Virtualization: Hypervisor

Today we are going to discuss about the Hypervisor which is a main component of the Server virtualization architecture. 

What is Hypervisor?
A hypervisor can be defined as a software component that can create emulated hardware (including CPU, memory, storage, networking, and peripherals, among other components) for the installation of a guest operating system . 

Fig 1.1- Hypervisor

In the context of server technologies, a hypervisor is essentially a program that allows the creation of virtual servers.

By isolating the operating system from the hardware, you can create a virtualization based x86 platform. VMware's hypervisor based virtualization products and solutions  provide you the fundamental technology for x86 virtualization.

Some of the commonly deployed Hypervisor are as below

Fig 1.2- Commonly used Hypervisor

Types of the Hypervisors
There are two types of different hypervisors and these are type 1 and type 2 hypervisors.

Type 1 hypervisor: Type 1 hypervisors are the hypervisors who runs directly on the system hardware, generally they are used in bare metal servers.

Fig 1.3- Types of Hypervisors

Type 2 hypervisor: Type 2 hypervisors are the hypervisors who runs on a host operating system that provides virtualization services, such as I/O device support and memory management.