Hypervisor is mainly classified into two

Type 1/Native/Bare Metal Hypervisor
Type 2/Hosted Hypervisor

Type 1 Hypervisor

  • This is also known as Bare Metal or Embedded or Native Hypervisor.
  • It works directly on the hardware of the host and can monitor operating systems that run above the hypervisor.
  • It is completely independent from the Operating System.
  • The hypervisor is small as its main task is sharing and managing hardware resources between different operating systems.
  • A major advantage is that any problems in one virtual machine or guest operating system do not affect the other guest operating systems running on the hypervisor.

Examples:

VMware ESXi Server,

Microsoft Hyper-V,

Citrix/Xen Server,

Type 2 Hypervisor

  • This is also known as Hosted Hypervisor.
  • In this case, the hypervisor is installed on an operating system and then supports other operating systems above it.
  • It is completely dependent on host Operating System for its operations
  • While having a base operating system allows better specification of policies, any problems in the base operating system a ffects the entire system as well even if the hypervisor running above the base OS is secure.

Examples:

VMware Workstation,

Microsoft Virtual PC,

Oracle Virtual Box,

Written by Sujith Surendran

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