| Architecture |
Hardware → Host OS → Hypervisor → Guest OS → App |
Hardware → Host OS → Container Engine → App |
| OS |
Each VM has its own full OS |
Share the host OS kernel |
| Resource Usage |
Heavy – needs CPU/RAM for full OS per VM |
Lightweight – minimal overhead |
| Startup Time |
Slow – minutes to boot |
Fast – seconds to start |
| Isolation |
Strong – complete OS separation |
Moderate – shared kernel isolation |
| Portability |
Large VM images (GBs), hypervisor-specific |
Small images (MBs), run anywhere |
| Use Cases |
Run multiple OS types, legacy apps, strong security isolation |
Microservices, CI/CD, rapid scaling |
| Example Tools |
VMware, VirtualBox, Hyper-V |
Docker, Podman, containerd |