Chapter 11

Virtualization

Compute virtualization is a technique of separating the physical hardware of a computer from the operating system (OS). This then enables multiple OSs to run at the same time on a single machine. Moreover, this process can further be extended to a cluster or pool of machines running many OSs and can give the impression to each OS that it has the complete physical machine or cluster of machines to itself. Each OS can then manage and allocate shared resources, without knowledge that such sharing extends way beyond the set of applications that each OS serves. Virtualization thus encapsulates an OS and a set of applications into a logical entity termed a virtual machine (VM).

Demand for virtualization has risen as the ...

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