VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture

Virtual machine security considerations

Virtual machines are the containers in which applications and guest operating systems run. By design, all VMware virtual machines are isolated from one another. This isolation enables multiple virtual machines to run securely while sharing hardware resources (CPU, memory, I/O), and provides their ability to both access hardware and to maintain uninterrupted performance.

Even a user with system administrator privileges on a virtual machine's guest operating system cannot breach this layer of isolation to access another virtual machine without privileges explicitly granted by the ESXi system administrator. As a result of virtual machine isolation, if a guest operating system running in a virtual machine ...