Virtual Machine Monitor

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What Does Virtual Machine Monitor Mean?

A Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is a software program that enables the creation, management and governance of virtual machines (VM) and manages the operation of a virtualized environment on top of a physical host machine.

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VMM is also known as Virtual Machine Manager and Hypervisor. However, the provided architectural implementation and services differ by vendor product.

Techopedia Explains Virtual Machine Monitor

VMM is the primary software behind virtualization environments and implementations. When installed over a host machine, VMM facilitates the creation of VMs, each with separate operating systems (OS) and applications. VMM manages the backend operation of these VMs by allocating the necessary computing, memory, storage and other input/output (I/O) resources.

VMM also provides a centralized interface for managing the entire operation, status and availability of VMs that are installed over a single host or spread across different and interconnected hosts.

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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.