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hypervisor

On Industry Standard computers - a layer of software which enables a virtual machine to run on a host machine (typically a physical server). The hypervisor contains drivers for the host system's hardware but offers up a standard interface to virtual machines such that they can operate independantly of the specific hardware.

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Desktop Virtualisation

If you have visited the Server Virtualisation page, you will know that a server consists of Hardware, Operating System and Software Applications. This is equally true of a PC - not surprisingly when you consider Industry Standard Servers evolved from PC's. So in exactly the same way that a server can be virtualised by encapsulating the Operating System and Software Applications into a Virtual Machine - so can a PC.

PC Virtualised

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Server Virtualisation

This section refers to Industry Standard (or X86) Servers. Virtualisation technology has been available in Unix and Mainframe servers for many many years however, the vast majority of servers deployed are Industry Standard and it is the virtualisation of these servers which has really caught user's interest in the last few years.

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