What is the difference between a “Container” and a “Virtual Machine”?
Primarily we use Parallels Container technology as the virtualization-core of our (dv) product line and our GridContainer system. Virtual Machines use “hypervisor virtualization”. Hypervisor virtualization is considered hardware virtualization while Parallels Container is considered operating system virtualization. OS virtualization has a smaller footprint which results in higher performance and more efficient use of server resources while still providing physical server-like resource isolation. In hypervisor based solutions each virtual machine has virtual instances of all of the host’s hardware, runs it’s own kernel image and has it’s own copy of the operating system. You can read more about these two types of virtualization here.
