Paravirtualization

What Does Paravirtualization Mean?

Paravirtualization is a virtualization technique that provides an interface to virtual machines that are similar to their underlying hardware. In paravirtualization, the guest operating system is explicitly ported before installing a virtual machine because a non-tailored guest operating system cannot run on top of a virtual machine monitor (VMM).

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Techopedia Explains Paravirtualization

Paravirtualization enables several different operating systems to run on one set of hardware by effectively using resources such as processors and memory. In paravirtualization, the operating system is modified to work with a virtual machine. The intention behind the modification of the operating system is to minimize the execution time required in performing the operations that are otherwise difficult to run in a virtual environment.

Paravirtualization has many significant performance advantages and its efficiencies offer better scaling. As a result, it is used in various areas of technology such as:

  • Partitioning development environments from test systems
  • Disaster recovery
  • Migrating data from one system to another
  • Capacity management

Paravirtualization technology was introduced by IBM and was developed as an open-source software project.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…