The virtualisation software allowing many isolated virtual machines to run on a single physical server. The cloud provider looks after it whichever service type is used.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Hypervisor in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Virtual machines
Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.
- Physical
Describes the concrete, real-world parts that put a logical architecture into effect.
- Provider
The organisation that shares data in OpenSharing. Recipients also see a provider as a Unity Catalog securable, from which shares can be mounted as catalogs.
Related terms
- DFW
Distributed firewall. Stateful rules from NSX (vDefend) are enforced right at each virtual NIC inside the hypervisor, giving micro-segmentation between workloads. Gateway firewalls on Tier-0/1 are a separate thing.
- ESX
VMware's bare-metal hypervisor, installed on each host in a VCF fleet. Up to version 9.0 it was known as ESXi.
- Hyper-V
The hypervisor built into Windows. The VMs for the Azure Extended Network appliance require the Hyper-V role, using nested virtualisation, and an external virtual switch for each NIC.
- VBS
Virtualisation-based security walls off a protected area of memory with the Windows hypervisor, keeping secrets and code integrity checks safe. Credential Guard and memory integrity depend on it.