A virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. It is an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real computer machine.

The physical, “real-world” hardware running the VM is generally referred to as the ‘host’, and the virtual machine emulated on that machine is generally referred to as the ‘guest’. A host can emulate several guests, each of which can emulate different operating systems and hardware platforms.

The benefit can include:

• separate systems for development and testing on a single host
• containerization of applications for security purposes
• running different kernels (windows on Linux) to run non-native applications (like games)
• they can be moved between local or remote virtualized servers

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine

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