A hypervisor is a hardware virtualization technique that enables multiple guest operating systems to run on a single host system at the same time. The guest operating system shares the hardware of the host computer such that each operating system appears to have its own processor, memory and other hardware resources.A hypervisor may also be known as a virtual machine manager (VMM).
The term hypervisor was first coined in 1956 by IBM to refer to software programs distributed with IBM RPQ for the IBM 360/65. The hypervisor program installed on the computer allowed the sharing of its memory. The hypervisor installed on the server hardware controls the guest operating system running on the host machine. Its main job is to cater to the needs of the guest operating system and effectively manage it such that the instances of multiple operating systems do not interrupt one another.Hypervisors can be divided into two types:
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