Basic Overview of Virtualization

In this lesson, we'll look into the basics of virtualization and how it works before starting with Vagrant.

What is virtualization?

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual copy of your hardware resources, which can be done using any virtualization software. Whenever you create a Virtual Machine using software, such as Oracle VirtualBox, VMware, or any other Virtual Machine software, the software takes a virtual copy of your hardware and uses this hardware copy to run your Virtual Machine in conjunction with your host machine.

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual version from an actual version of an operating system, hardware, etc.

OS virtualization can enable hardware to simultaneously run multiple copies of OS on the same system.

How does virtualization work

Software called hypervisors allow us to create a virtual version from an actual version of hardware, software, etc. Hypervisors can either sit on top of an operating system (like a laptop) or be installed directly onto hardware (like a server), the latter being how enterprises virtualize. Hypervisors take your physical resources and divide them up so that virtual environments can use them.

We’ll talk more about hypervisors in the next lesson.

Get hands-on with 1200+ tech skills courses.