Guest Virtual Machine

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What Does Guest Virtual Machine Mean?

A guest virtual machine (Guest VM) refers to a virtual machine that is installed, executed and hosted on the local physical machine.

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A guest virtual machine is implemented on the local workstation or server, and is powered entirely by the machine hosting it. A guest virtual machine runs simultaneous to the host machine. The two share hardware resources but the guest VM has a separate guest operating system, which executes on top of the host machine operating system through a hypervisor.

Techopedia Explains Guest Virtual Machine

A guest virtual machine has the same functionalities as a physical or hosted virtual machine , having its own operating system, installed applications, processes, input/output requests and other related services. These services are provided by the machine on which the guest VM is hosted, making the VM totally dependent on the host machine for its entire operation. The guest VM can gather its resources from multiple different physical machines at a time to meet performance requirements.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret 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 IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.