Virtualization in practice

The main alternative to hypervisor-based virtualization is containerization. It uses the kernel of the operating system to run. It allows multiple virtual machines to run in isolation and independently of each other. Virtual machines are referred to as containers or virtual environments (VEs). In this architecture, the operating system is adapted to run as multiple stand-alone systems, allowing distributed applications to be deployed and executed without having to launch a virtual machine separately for each one. Instead, there are several isolated systems, called containers, running on a single management host, all accessing a single operating system kernel.