Hypervisor
Also known as: Virtual Machine Monitor
A hypervisor is the software that sets up and manages several virtual machines on a single physical server.
A hypervisor is the software layer that runs on a physical server and divides its processing power, memory, and storage among several virtual machines. It exists as the technical foundation of virtualization - without it there would be no separation between virtual machines and no way to manage them independently of one another.
In practice there are two kinds: a type-1 hypervisor runs directly on the hardware with no underlying operating system beneath it, and is used in server environments. A type-2 hypervisor runs as a program inside an existing operating system, for example on a workstation for testing or development.
A common edge case is assuming the hypervisor itself is redundant just because the virtual machines running on it are cleanly separated. The hypervisor is a single software layer on one physical machine - if that machine fails, the hypervisor and every virtual machine running on it go down together.
What it means in practice
For a business this means: how the hypervisor is chosen and configured determines how stable and maintainable the whole virtual infrastructure is, even though users never see it directly. NDVDL sets up hypervisor environments so maintenance and updates can happen without interrupting ongoing operation.
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