thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Systems & Data Center · Foundational

Virtual Machine (VM)

A software-defined computer with virtual hardware that runs its own operating system on top of a hypervisor.

Definition

A VM consists of configuration files and virtual disks and is isolated from other VMs on the same host. VMs can be snapshotted, cloned, migrated and backed up as files.

Example

A Windows Server VM with 4 vCPUs, 16 GB RAM and a 100 GB VMDK runs on an ESXi host.

Exam tip

VMs virtualize hardware and run full guest OSs; containers share the host kernel.

Related terms