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This article mainly explains "what are the advantages of virtual machines". The content of the explanation is simple and clear, and it is easy to learn and understand. let's follow the editor's train of thought to study and learn what are the advantages of virtual machines.

What is a virtual machine?

Basically, VM is software that runs a program without binding to a physical machine. In an VM instance, one or more clients can run on a physical host.

Each VM has its own operating system and runs separately from other VM, even if they reside on the same physical host. VM usually runs on a server, but it can also run on PC systems or even embedded platforms. Multiple VM can share resources from physical hosts, including CPU, network bandwidth and memory.

Virtual machines originated in computing in the early 1960s, when mainframe users' sharing was a way to separate software from physical host systems. Virtual machines were defined as "efficient isolated copies of real computers" in the early 1970s.

Virtual machines have evolved over the past 15 years as enterprises adopt server virtualization to make more efficient use of the computing power of their physical servers, thereby reducing the need for physical servers and saving space in the data center. Because applications with different operating system requirements can run on a single physical host, there is no need to equip each server with different server hardware.

In general, there are two types of VM: process VM, which separates a single process, and system VM, which completely separates the operating system and applications from the physical computer. Examples of process VM include Java virtual machines, .NET Framework, and Parrot virtual machines.

The system VM relies on the hypervisor as an intermediary for software to access hardware resources. Well-known hypervisors include VMware (ESX/ESXi), Intel / Linux Foundation (Xen), Oracle (MV Server for SPARC and Oracle VM Server for x86) and Microsoft (Hyper-V).

PC systems can also take advantage of virtual machines. For example, Mac users run virtual Windows 10 instances on their physical Mac.

Advantages of virtual machines

Because the software is separate from the physical host, users can run multiple instances on a single hardware, saving company time, administrative costs, and physical space. Another advantage of VM is that VM can support older applications, reducing or eliminating the need and cost of migrating older applications to newer or different operating systems.

In addition, developers can use VM to test applications in a secure sandboxie environment. It can also help isolate malware that may infect a given instance of VM. Because the software in the VM cannot tamper with the host, malware cannot spread and cause as much damage as possible.

Disadvantages of virtual machines

Virtual machines do have some disadvantages. Running multiple VM on a single physical host can lead to performance instability, especially if the infrastructure requirements of a particular application are not met. This also makes them less efficient in many cases than physical servers. Most IT operations strike a balance between physical and virtual systems.

Extension of Virtualization

The success of virtual machines in server virtualization has led to the application of virtualization to other areas, including storage, networking, and desktops.

In network virtualization, enterprises explore network-as-a-service options and network function virtualization (NFV), which uses commercial servers instead of dedicated network devices to achieve more flexible and scalable services.

This is different from the software-defined network, which separates the network control plane from the forwarding plane to achieve more automatic configuration and policy-based management of network resources. The third technology, virtual network function, is a software-based service that can run in a NFV environment, including routing, firewall, load balancing, WAN acceleration and encryption.

Virtual machines and containers

The growth of VM has led to the further development of technologies such as containers, which has taken VM a step further and won its appeal among Web application developers. In container settings, you can virtualize a single application and its dependencies. The container is much less expensive than VM, which contains only binaries, libraries, and applications.

Although some people think that the development of containers may kill virtual machines, VM has enough features and advantages to enable the technology to evolve. For example, VM is still useful when running multiple applications together or running older applications on older operating systems.

In addition, some people think that the container is not as secure as the VM hypervisor because the container has only one OS shared by the application, and VM can isolate the application from the OS.

So even if enterprises explore cloud architectures and containers, the VM software market is still a fundamental technology. In IDC's "Global Virtual Machine Software Forecast 2019-2022", it is mentioned that although the virtual machine software market is highly mature and nearly saturated, it will maintain a strong growth momentum in the next five years, and will continue to maintain positive growth.

In addition, virtual machines are seen as part of new technologies such as 5G and edge computing. For example, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) vendors such as Microsoft, VMware and Citrix further extend VDI systems to remote desktops.

Thank you for your reading. The above is the content of "what are the advantages of virtual machines". After the study of this article, I believe you have a deeper understanding of the advantages of virtual machines. Specific use also needs to be verified in practice. Here is, the editor will push for you more related knowledge points of the article, welcome to follow!

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