The Evolution of Hypervisors
First Generation (1970s-1980s)
- Although the first hypervisors developed in the 1970s-1980s were mainly designed for mainframes, nowadays they are also being used on desktop computers.
- They narrowed down to splitting mainframe resources and it had them running with multiple operating system instances.
- Such examples comprise of C/CMS (Control Program/Cambridge Monitor System) and VM/370 introduced by IBM.
Second Generation (1990s-2000s)
- Due to the surge of x86 architecture and desktop computing the form of Type 1 (bare-metal) and Type 2 (hosted) hypervisors was invented.
- The first type of hypervisors which contain as examples VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen run on the physical processor resources without having a host operating system.
- Type 2 hypervisors, such as Workstation of VMware, Virtualbox and Parallels Desktop, come as a program for a host OS.
- They allowed for server consolidation, and optimized resource usage in addition to helping move through virtual facilities management.
Third Generation (2010s-Present)
- The third generation of hypervisors based on the innovations gave priority to the upgrades in performance, scalability, and cloud computing support.
- Instead of the representative hypervisors traditional hypervisor-based virtualization containerisation technologies like Docker and Kubernetes line up as alternatives offering lightweight and efficient deployment options.
- Major players of hypervisor vendors get involved in the process of locking and transmission of data through the employment of such supporting measures as secure boot, memory isolation, and encryption, for addressing the threats that already exist in a virtual environment or become complicated.
- By first KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and Xen becoming available as open-source hypervisors, virtualization became widely accessible to all budgets and needs.
- The hypervisors along with the platforms and orchestration tools were integrated in a way that allowed for automated provisioning and scaling of virtual workloads management.
Fourth Generation (Future)
- Network virtualization will connect edge computing and serverless in the future, also AI will be an essential part.
- The human resources subcommittee, therefore, recommends various training opportunities to impart the skills required for efficiently and competently performing core organizational functions, as well as offer training programs for the personnel to maximize their potential.
- Hypervisors might appear to be developed accommodating for newer use case implementations, for instance, real-time processing, high-performance computing and decentralized applications.
What is a Hypervisor ?
Hypervisor is a community-driven project that offers a free hypervisor for task management in a cloud environment. It is designed to be a lightweight, secure, and lesson-intensive virtualization solution that suits the advanced architecture of today’s cloud environments better. KVM is the foundation of the Cloud Hypervisor cloud computing technology, which is additionally based on both Linux and KVM ecosystems.