What is a VM?

A Virtual Machine (VM) is a software emulation of a physical computer. It is a self-contained operating environment that runs an operating system (OS) or multiple OSes on top of a host machine, utilizing the host's physical hardware resources.

A VM is created by virtualization software, which divides the physical resources of the host machine into virtual resources that can be allocated to each VM. Each VM is sandboxed from the others, ensuring that if one VM experiences issues or crashes, it will not affect the host or other VMs.

VMs provide numerous benefits, including:

Hardware virtualization: allows multiple OSes to run on a single physical machine

Isolation: ensures that each VM is isolated from others, enhancing security and stability

Portability: VMs are portable across different host machines, as long as the virtualization software is compatible

Flexibility: allows easy creation, deletion, and modification of VMs as needed

Some popular virtualization software options include VMware, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V.