Overview of Virtualization Technologies

Virtualization has been around for quite a while now; however, its mass appeal has only been realized with the extensive improvements that have appeared in the last few years. In virtualization’s early days, you had to purchase very expensive hardware; now, due to its commoditization, you can use commodity PC servers and download free virtualization software to get started.

A number of different virtualization technologies are available in the market today, including the following:

  Full software virtualization

  Hardware-assisted software virtualization or Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM)

  Paravirtualization or Paravirtualized Machine (PV)

  Hybrid virtualization technology (PVHVM)

  Component or resource virtualization