Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of running powerful software on a computer to create a complete environment that imitates all of the hardware you’d have on a real computer. It’s a computer within a computer. In this virtual environment, we can install and run an operating system exactly as if it were installed directly on its own hardware. That guest environment is called a virtual machine. The physical computer that is running the VMs is called the host. Virtualization convinces an operating system that it’s running on its own hardware. Hypervisor software makes virtualization possible.
Hypervisor
Virtualization enables one machine, called the host, to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, full virtualization requires an extra layer of programming called a hypervisor to manage the vastly more complex interactions. A hypervisor has to handle every input and output that the operating system would request of normal hardware. Now you can easily add and remove virtual network cards, virtual hard drives, virtual RAM, and so forth. Virtualization even goes so far as to provide virtualized BIOS and system setup for every virtual machine. Hypervisors come in two types. Type 1 is more common than type 2.
- Type 1 – Bare Metal
- Type 2 – Hosted
The host machine allocates real RAM and CPU time to each running virtual machine. You can run a number of virtual machines at the same time, but do your homework first and make sure you will have enough CPU power and more importantly, enough RAM.
Hyper-V
Wikipedia says: “Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V supersedes Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks. Hyper-V was first released alongside Windows Server 2008, and has been available without charge for all the Windows Server and some client operating systems since.” Over at ow To Geek there is an article on how to install and get started with Hyper-V. The article is called How to Create and Run Virtual Machines With Hyper-V.
Hyper-V requirements:
In the BIOS, the following features must be supported:
Hardware-assisted virtualization
Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
Hardware-based Data Execution Prevention (DEP)
In Windows, Hyper-V must be enabled and running.
You have to be a member of the local Hyper-V Administrators group.
YouTube Instructional Videos
Virtualization Explained was put up on YouTube in March of 2019 by the IBM Cloud Team.