Question

There are two types of hypervisors: type I and type II. List the order from bottom to top of the layers involved starting with the physical layer first (all the way at the bottom) to the top layer, a running guest os, for both a type I hypervisor and a type II hypervisor.

Answer 1

Type 1 hypervisors are those hypervisors that runs directly on the system hardware. These are also known as bare metal or embedded hypervisors. While Type 2 hypervisors are those hypervisors that runs on top of a host operating system.

Layers involved in Type 1 Hypervisors:

===BOTTOM FIRST===

1. Physical Hardware
2. Hypervisor
3. Operating System(s)
4. Application(s)

Layers involved in Type 2 Hypervisors:

===BOTTOM FIRST===

1. Physical Hardware
2. Host Operating System
3. Hypervisor
4. Guest Operating System(s)
5. Application(s)

===========================================================================

Examples of Type 1 Hypervisors:

1. VMware ESX and ESXi
2. Microsoft Hyper-V
3. Citrix XenServer
4. Oracle VM

Examples of Type 2 Hypervisors:

1. VMware Workstation/Fusion/Player
2. Microsoft Virtual PC
3. Oracle VM VirtualBox
4. Red Hat’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)