--- tags: Hypervisor, Types --- # Types of Hypervisor ###### tags: `Hypervisor` `Types` ### There are two types of hypervisors: #### Type 1 hypervisor: > hypervisors run directly on the system hardware – A “bare metal” embedded hypervisor. #### Type 2 hypervisor: > hypervisors run on a host operating system that provides virtualization services, such as I/O device support and memory management. ![](https://i.imgur.com/vLyWun4.png) ### Type 1 hypervisors: #### 1. VMware ESX and ESXi > These hypervisors offer advanced features and scalability, but require licensing, so the costs are higher. > There are some lower-cost bundles that VMware offers and they can make hypervisor technology more affordable for small infrastructures. > VMware is the leader in the Type-1 hypervisors. Their vSphere/ESXi product is available in a free edition and 5 commercial editions. #### 2. Microsoft Hyper-V > The Microsoft hypervisor, Hyper-V doesn’t offer many of the advanced features that VMware’s products provide. > However, with XenServer and vSphere, Hyper-V is one of the top 3 Type-1 hypervisors. > It was first released with Windows Server, but now Hyper-V has been greatly enhanced with Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Hyper-V is available in both a free edition (with no GUI and no virtualization rights) and 4 commercial editions – Foundations (OEM only), Essentials, Standard, and Datacenter. Hyper-V #### 3. Citrix XenServer > It began as an open source project. > The core hypervisor technology is free, but like VMware’s free ESXi, it has almost no advanced features. > Xen is a type-1 bare-metal hypervisor. Just as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization uses KVM, Citrix uses Xen in the commercial XenServer. > Today, the Xen open source projects and community are at Xen.org. Today, XenServer is a commercial type-1 hypervisor solution from Citrix, offered in 4 editions. Confusingly, Citrix has also branded their other proprietary solutions like XenApp and XenDesktop with the Xen name. #### 4. Oracle VM > The Oracle hypervisor is based on the open source Xen. > However, if you need hypervisor support and product updates, it will cost you. > Oracle VM lacks many of the advanced features found in other bare-metal virtualization hypervisors. ### Type 2 hypervisor #### 1. VMware Workstation/Fusion/Player > VMware Player is a free virtualization hypervisor. > It is intended to run only one virtual machine (VM) and does not allow creating VMs. VMware Workstation is a more robust hypervisor with some advanced features, such as record-and-replay and VM snapshot support. > VMware Workstation has three major use cases: > for running multiple different operating systems or versions of one OS on one desktop, > for developers that need sandbox environments and snapshots, or for labs and demonstration purposes. #### 2. VMware Server > VMware Server is a free, hosted virtualization hypervisor that’s very similar to the VMware Workstation. VMware has halted development on Server since 2009 #### 3. Microsoft Virtual PC > This is the latest Microsoft’s version of this hypervisor technology, Windows Virtual PC and runs only on Windows 7 and supports only Windows operating systems running on it. #### 4. Oracle VM VirtualBox > VirtualBox hypervisor technology provides reasonable performance and features if you want to virtualize on a budget. Despite being a free, hosted product with a very small footprint, VirtualBox shares many features with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. #### 5. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization > Red Hat’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) has qualities of both a hosted and a bare-metal virtualization hypervisor. It can turn the Linux kernel itself into a hypervisor so the VMs have direct access to the physical hardware. #### KVM > This is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. It supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions. > The open-source KVM (or Kernel-Based Virtual Machine) is a Linux-based type-1 hypervisor that can be added to most Linux operating systems including Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but also Solaris, and Windows.