A virtual machine is an emulated computer system. They behave as if they were a computer but are isolated from the resources of the computer where they run. The following are common types of virtual machine.
Hardware Virtualization:
Sharing a physical computer including resources such as CPU, memory and network. This is done in a transparent way such that each virtual machine has an interface that is similar or identical to the physical computer. For example, a web server host may divide each server into 16 virtual machines in order to offer a market competitive price for web hosting. Each virtual machine will have access to 1/16 of each resource on the machine minus some overhead required by the virtualization.
Platform Virtualization:
A platform that provides an interface that is independent of the machine. This allows you to write software once and then run it on any operating system and hardware supported by the platform.
Sandbox:
A SandBox is a security mechanism that runs untrusted software in a virtual environment. If the software makes malicious changes to the environment, the underlying computer system is unaffected.
A sandbox is a virtual container for running software. They are designed to prevent software from damaging anything outside the container. A sandbox is typically disposable such that it is created to run some software and then discarded. The following are illustrative examples of a sandbox.
Software:
Tools that allow users to run software they don’t trust in a sandbox such that it can’t damage their devices or access their private data. A sandbox looks like a complete system to the software such that it can’t typically detect that it’s constrained to a virtual environment.
Web Browsers:
It is common to run a web browser that you trust inside a sandbox. If a website exploits a vulnerability in your web browser, the damage can be minimized to the sandbox.
Security:
Security tools may use sandboxes for research or detection of malicious digital entities. For example, a security tool may install and run software or visit websites to monitor what files end up being changed.
Virtualization:
Virtualization such as a virtual machine is essentially a type of sandbox. For example, a web host may offer 20 virtual machines to customers on one physical machine. Each virtual machine can only access a container of resources. This provides stability as no single customer can hog resources or crash the machine.
Platforms:
Software platforms typically run things in containers with limited resources such that one system, application, service or component can’t crash the platform.
What is the role of virtual machine?
Keywords- Virtual machine, Host OS, Guest OS. The software that controls the computer and how it uses its re- sources is called the Operating System. … The operating system provides two main functions. The first function is managing the basic hardware operations.
How do virtual machines work?
Putting multiple VMs on a single computer enables several operating systems and applications to run on just one physical server, or “host.” A thin layer of software called a “hypervisor” decouples the virtual machines from the host and dynamically allocates computing resources to each virtual machine as needed.
What are the benefits of a virtual machine?
The main advantages of virtual machines:
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Multiple OS environments can exist simultaneously on the same machine, isolated from each other;
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Virtual machine can offer an instruction set architecture that differs from real computer’s;
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Easy maintenance, application provisioning, availability and convenient recovery.
