VirtualBox is loved as a Type 2 hypervisor mainly because it’s not required to reboot the system to run the other operating system on your computer nor maintain the typically more expensive Type 1 hypervisor systems. Additionally Type 1 hypervisors “run cloud-hosted environments, server virtualization environments, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).” Type 2 hypervisors, though, run a single guest virtual machine on local systems. Some examples of Type 1 hypervisors include Hyper-V, Xen, and OpenVZ. A Type 1 hypervisor, instead, is “host software that runs on what’s now known as ‘bare metal.’ ” This essentially means that it runs on a computer without an operating system. This product is a Type 2 hypervisor, so it’s a virtualization host software that runs on an already established operating system as an application. It’s open-source, hence it’s free price tag, and has a large number of features to back it up.Īccording to their website, VirtualBox is “a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop, and embedded use.” And although this list is specifically for Windows computers, it’s nice to note that it’s also available on Mac and Linux machines. VirtualBox has passed through a few different hands but is now owned by Oracle. What’s better than great, functional software? Functional and free software. So, let’s take a look at the top OS virtual machine applications for Windows computers. This can potentially save you quite a bit of money by running multiple servers virtually on one computer. One of the most used instances of this is to test software or applications in a different environment, rather than on a different computer. So, operating system virtualization allows your computer’s hardware to run many operating system images simultaneously.

As most of you likely already know, virtualization means creating a virtual version of things, such as network resources or storage devices. Using virtualization software to run different operating systems on one computer has become very popular in today’s technological world, and with good reason.

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