What are VMs and how virtualization is different from Containerization

A virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a physical computer system It provides all of the functionality of a real computer but is simply a clone of one and not the actual thing. A virtual machine, also known as a "guest," is created on a physical computer, or "host," using the CPU core and memory. Even when they are all running on the same host, every virtual machine runs its own operating system and works independently of the others. This means that a physical PC could, for instance, host a virtual Linux system.

Virtualization refers to the process of using software to create virtual resources that run on a separate layer from the physical hardware. The most common use case for virtualization is cloud computing. Virtualization allows you to run multiple VMs on a single machine. These VMs are independent systems, but share the same physical IT infrastructure and are managed by a hypervisor. These lightweight software layers isolate VMs and allocate processors, memory, and storage. These are basically machine monitors that allow you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously.

As defined by Docker’s official documentation, “Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The isolation and security allow you to run many containers simultaneously on a given host. Containers are lightweight because they don’t need the extra load of a hypervisor, but run directly within the host machine’s kernel. This means you can run more containers on a given hardware combination than if you were using virtual machines”.

A container is a lightweight, portable, and disposable software package that you can use to deploy applications. Containers allow developers to build and test their applications quickly, without affecting production servers in any way. The benefits of containers include faster time-to-market, reduced costs, and more flexibility in how applications are deployed.

Through the packaging of a program's dependencies and parameters into a single entity, containers serve as a means of separating an application from its environment. Then, this unit can be transported to different settings, like data centers, private clouds, and public clouds.

Containers are more lightweight and agile for virtualizing your environment and it does not need a hypervisor. DevOps can concentrate on writing code and deploying it for quicker resource provision thanks to them. An application that has been containerized performs consistently in development, staging, and production.

These are just a couple of highlights to help you understand the fundamental difference between virtualization and containerization.

Virtualization, containerization, and docker are all technologies used to create a virtualized environment, the main difference between these is that virtualization takes the physical machine and puts it inside another virtual machine. It is a method of providing multiple operating systems on a single computer. Containerization is more focused on isolating processes within an individual container rather than on linking different ones together

Virtualization is used to create an environment that emulates a hardware platform. With containerization, the operating system does not look like one big machine. Each container is self-sufficient with its own network interface, storage, and running processes.

Both virtualization and containerization are used to simplify application deployment, but with containerization, you have more control over what your final image will look like.

Virtualization uses a layer of software to run multiple operating systems on the same physical hardware. You can run both Linux and Windows at once, for instance. Containerization uses exactly the same code as virtualization, but instead of running multiple operating systems (referred to as containers) on the same hardware, it wraps your application inside of a sandbox. This means that DevOps teams can build, test and deploy applications in isolation from one another.

Containerization is more focused on isolating processes within an individual container rather than on linking different ones together.

DevOps is about speeding up the time it takes for a team or organization to deliver new software, by breaking down walls between developers, testers, and operations. Containerizing applications helps accelerate that process because it allows for flexibility rather than having to maintain multiple sets of infrastructure for different purposes across a wide range of organizations.

Containerization allows for better security, as it requires additional mechanisms such as container isolation and a unified manager managing the containers, which rather than being a single point of failure like virtualization can be a key advantage in certain scenarios.

We all know about containers, and most of us use Docker for containerization. However, it is important to understand the difference between virtualization and containerization. As you can see above, there are some major differences between these two terms.