Virtualization Glossary

Browse 15 virtualization terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

15 Virtualization Terms

Container
A container is a lightweight, standalone executable package that bundles application code with everything needed to run: runtime, system tools, libraries, and...
Firecracker
An open-source virtualization technology for lightweight microVMs designed for secure and efficient serverless or multi-tenant workloads.
Hypervisor Escape
A vulnerability or exploit that allows code running inside a virtual machine to break out of guest isolation and interact with the host hypervisor or other...
Hypervisor Security
The protection of the virtualization layer that creates and manages virtual machines, including hardening, patching, access control, and monitoring of the...
Hypervisor Slang
Informal language used around hypervisors, virtualization layers, and the strange boundary between guest and host behavior. In engineering slang, it usually...
LXC
Linux Containers, a set of userspace tools for running multiple isolated Linux systems on one host.
Micro-Virtualization
A security design that isolates risky tasks such as browsing or document opening into very small disposable virtualized environments instead of relying only on...
Proxmox
An open-source virtualization platform used to manage virtual machines, containers, and clustered hosts.
Qemu
An open-source machine emulator and virtualizer that can emulate a full system (CPU, memory, devices) for a foreign architecture via dynamic binary...
Vagrant
A HashiCorp tool that automates the creation and provisioning of reproducible virtual machine environments using a declarative Vagrantfile. It wraps providers...
Virtual Device
A software-emulated hardware device presented to a virtual machine or operating system as if it were physical hardware. Examples include virtio network cards,...
Virtual Machine
A software emulation of a complete computer system that runs its own operating system and applications in isolation from the host. System VMs (like those...
Virtual Network
A software-defined network that provides isolated Layer 2 or Layer 3 connectivity between virtual machines or containers without requiring dedicated physical...
VM
Abbreviation for Virtual Machine — either a system-level VM that emulates complete hardware (managed by hypervisors like KVM or ESXi) or a process-level VM...
VMware
A Broadcom-owned (formerly independent) company and product suite that pioneered x86 virtualization. Its core products — ESXi (bare-metal hypervisor), vCenter...

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