Virtualization Platform Products

Virtualization platforms are primarily used for creating and managing virtual machines (VMs). These platforms enable running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine.

This post features virtualization platform products.

Type 1 Hypervisor Virtualization Platforms

Type 1 are those hypervisors that are directly installed as an OS.

List of Virtualization Apps:

Xen
VMware ESXi
Microsoft Hyper-V (when installed in “bare-metal” mode)
KVM

Xen

Xen is free and open-source software (FOSS) for a type 1 hypervisor. It is developed by the Linux Foundation and Intel.

Xen is can be contained in a platform, for example Cisco’s XenServer.

VMWare ESXi

VMWare is the oldest of all existing tools.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is develeped by Microsoft. Installed as default on Windows 11 OS.

Can be installed as bare-metal mode (type 1) or be installed on Windows servers hosted (type 2).

KVM

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a free and open-source virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor.

Proxmox Virtual Environment

Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) is FOSS.

Proxmox Virtual Machine official website

Type 2 Hypervisor Products

Type 2 hypervisores are those that are installed over an OS.

Type 2 hypervisor products:

VMware Workstation
WMware Workstation Player
Virtual Box
Hyper-V
Parallels Desktop

VMware Workstation

VMware workstation.

VirtualBox

Virtual Box, also known as Oracle VM VirtualBox, is developed by Oracle.

The main part is free and open source under a GPL v3 license, but the VirtualBox Extension Pack is proprietary.

It was originally developed by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, that was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, that was acquired by Oracle in 2010.

Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop allows macOS users to run Windows applications alongside macOS without rebooting.