Virtual Machine

A virtual machine (VM) is a virtual operating system that runs on a host machine: a actual physical computer system. Several VM isolated from each other can be operated seperately. Ressources from the physical hardware of the host machine are allocated to VM by an hypervisor

A virtual machine representation

Hypervisor

Hypervisor, also know as virtual machine monitor (VMM) is a software that creates and manages multiple VM on a single host machine allowing them to share hardware ressources, like CPU and memory.

There are two main types of hypersivors: type 1 runs directly on the hardware, and type 2 which runs on top of a host operating system.