LINUX VIRTUAL MACHINES

KVM is an open source standard for hardware virtualization implemented on Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows platforms. Virtual machines or VM's allow multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single server. Hardware virtualization is the process by which a computer executes a program on a different piece of hardware. KVM supports several features such as memory allocation, I/O operations and secondary storage. Hardware virtualization can be beneficial in many scenarios, like running different versions of an application on different hardware or making heavy tasks run on a less powerful system.