virtual machine (VM)

A virtual machine (VM) is an operating system (OS) or application environment that is installed on software, which imitates dedicated hardware. The end user has the same experience on a virtual machine as they would have on dedicated hardware.

Specialized software, called a hypervisor, emulates the PC client or server's CPU, memory, hard disk, network and other hardware resources completely, enabling virtual machines to share the resources. The hypervisor can emulate multiple virtual hardware platforms that are isolated from each other, allowing virtual machines to run Linux and Windows Server operating systems on the same underlying physical host. Virtualization limits costs by reducing the need for physical hardware systems. Virtual machines more efficiently use hardware, which lowers the quantities of hardware and associated maintenance costs, and reduces power and cooling demand. They also ease management because virtual hardware does not fail. Administrators can take advantage of virtual environments to simplify backups, disaster recovery, new deployments and basic system administration tasks.

Virtual machines do not require specialized, hypervisor-specific hardware. Virtualization does, however, require more bandwidth, storage and processing capacity than a traditional server or desktop if the physical hardware is going to host multiple running virtual machines. VMs can easily move, be copied and reassigned between host servers to optimize hardware resource utilization. Because VMs on a physical host can consume unequal resource quantities -- one may hog the available physical storage, while another stores little -- IT professionals must balance VMs with available resources.