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What Is Hypervisor? Detailed Explanation With Types

Hypervisor: In this tutorial, we will learn what is the hypervisor, why the hypervisor is important, and what are the types of hypervisors. By IncludeHelp Last updated : June 09, 2023

What is a hypervisor?

A hypervisor is a technology that is in charge of ensuring that resource sharing occurs in a systematic and repeatable manner. Because it is located at the lowest levels of the hardware environment, the hypervisor only requires a minimal layer of code to allow for dynamic resource sharing. The hypervisor gives the impression that each operating system has complete control over the physical resources.

With the advent of the hypervisor, the technology components of the big data stack may be delivered in an optimal manner. The hypervisor enables you to display the same application on multiple systems without having to physically copy the application to each device in question. It has the ability to load any number of operating systems as if they were simply another application on the computer. Consequently, the hypervisor is a very practical tool for swiftly and efficiently virtualizing a variety of resources.

Because the guest virtual machines (VMs) are not dependent on the host hardware, hypervisors allow for improved use of a system's available resources as well as more IT mobility. As a result, they may be simply transferred between different server environments. Because a hypervisor allows numerous virtual machines to run on a single physical server, it helps to reduce the following problems:

• Space
• Energy
• Maintenance requirements

Why hypervisor is important?

There are various advantages to employing a hypervisor that can host several virtual machines, including the following:

• Speed: hypervisors allow virtual computers to be constructed in seconds, rather than minutes or hours. This makes it easy to provision resources as needed for workloads that change on a regular basis.
• Efficient utilization of resources: Hypervisors that allow several virtual machines to share the resources of a single physical machine allow for more efficient utilization of a single physical server. The cost and energy savings of running several virtual machines on a single physical machine outweigh the costs and energy savings of running multiple underutilized actual machines for the same work.
• Flexibility: Because the hypervisor separates the operating system from the underlying hardware, bare-metal hypervisors allow operating systems and their associated applications to run on a variety of hardware types. As a result, the software no longer relies on specific hardware devices or drivers.
• Portability: hypervisors allow various operating systems to coexist on the same physical computer (host machine). Because the virtual computers that the hypervisor operates are separate from the real machine on which they are running, they can be moved around. As workloads change, IT professionals can move them from one machine to another or from one platform to another, allocating networking, memory, storage, and processor resources across several servers as needed. When a program requires greater processing power, virtualization software enables it to access new machines without having to restart the program.

Types of hypervisors

1. TYPE-1 Hypervisor
2. TYPE-2 Hypervisor

1. TYPE-1 Hypervisor

A hypervisor is a virtual machine that runs on top of the underlying host system. It is also referred to as a "Native Hypervisor" or a "Bare metal hypervisor" in some circles. It is not necessary to have a base server operating system installed. It has direct access to the hardware resources available to it.

Type 1 hypervisors include the VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors, to name a few examples. 

Advantages

• Because they have direct access to the physical hardware resources, such hypervisors are extremely efficient (like CPU, Memory, Network, Physical storage).
• This results in the empowering of security because there is no third-party resource of any type, making it impossible for an attacker to compromise anything.

Disadvantage

Hypervisor is that they often require a dedicated separate machine to accomplish their operations, as well as to train and control multiple virtual machines and the host hardware resources.

2. TYPE-2 Hypervisor

A host operating system is a system that runs on top of a host system. It is also referred to as a "Hosted Hypervisor." In contrast to traditional hypervisors, which run directly on the underlying hardware, such hypervisors run as an application on the host system (physical machine). In essence, software that has been installed on an operating system. The hypervisor requests that the operating system do hardware calls.

Virtualization software such as VMware Player or Parallels Desktop is examples of Type 2 hypervisor. Hosted hypervisors are frequently seen on endpoints such as personal computers.

The type-2 hypervisor is extremely beneficial for engineers, security analysts, and other professionals (for checking malware, or malicious source code and newly developed applications).

Advantages

The usage of hypervisors in this manner provides for quick and easy access to a guest Operating System while the host computer is still functioning. In addition, these hypervisors are typically equipped with extra beneficial capabilities for the guest machine. These types of tools improve the synchronization between the host machine and the guest computer.

Disadvantage

Because there is no direct access to real hardware resources, the efficiency of these hypervisors is lower when compared to type-1 hypervisors, and their performance is lower.

• There are also potential security hazards; for example, if an attacker gains access to the host operating system, he can exploit the security hole to get access to the guest operating system.

How does a hypervisor work?

Hypervisors enable the construction and control of virtual machines (VMs) by abstracting the software running on a computer from the hardware on which it is running. In order for virtualization to be possible, hypervisors must be used to translate requests between physical and virtual resources. Virtualization software can be accessed and used by the operating system on a computer when using bare-metal hypervisors, which are incorporated into the firmware at the same level as the motherboard basic input/output system.