[ Thanks to James
Maguire for this link. ]
“Virtualization Definition
“Let’s begin with a quick introduction of virtualization to set
the stage for the following exploration. Virtualization is nothing
more than an abstraction over physical resources to make them
shareable by a number of physical users (see Figure 1).“From this definition, we could categorize many things as
virtualization that have historically not been so (such as early
time sharing systems). But this is the essence of virtualization,
and as we’ll find, creates many interesting and unique
technologies“Platform Virtualization
“Let’s start with the most prolific aspect of virtualization,
called platform virtualization. Platform virtualization (and its
sub-categories) is what enables both server and desktop
virtualization. “Platform” in this context refers to the hardware
platform and its various components. This includes not only the
CPU, but also networking and storage and even bus attachments such
as USB and serial ports.”