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,
