What is Hypervisor and types of hypervisors?

What is Hypervisor?

A hypervisor is an operating system (OS) that allows other OS to run independently. You can run multiple OS on the same physical hardware. A computer on which hypervisor runs is called a host machine and each virtual machine (VM) is called a guest machine. Each VM shares the same computing resources such as CPU, memory, and storage from the same physical machine.

A hypervisor is secure to attack because it isolates different VMs so an attack on a guest VM cannot spread to other guests’ VMs.

There are 2 types of hypervisors

Type 1 (bare-metal)

This type of hypervisor directly runs on the hardware. It is also referred to as a native or bare-metal hypervisor. It doesn’t require an OS to run on as a matter of fact it is an OS that allows other OS to run on.

This type of hypervisor is mostly common in an enterprise data center. It also requires some level of management.

Examples of Type 1 hypervisors are VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix/Xen Server.

Type 2 (hosted hypervisor)

This type of hypervisor is installed on your existing OS and is also known as a hosted hypervisor. It mostly relies on resources given to OS.

Enterprise can use this but it is mostly famous for individual users. Users can run multiple OS on their PC.

Examples of Type 2 hypervisors are VMware Workstation, Oracle VirtualBox, and Parallel Desktop for Mac.