Multihypervisor

Multihypervisor is the practice of deploying and operating more than one hypervisor within a single IT environment to host virtual machines and workloads. It enables organizations to run different virtualization technologies side by side, either on the same hardware or within the same data center, and to coordinate them through a shared management layer.

Common motivations include legacy migrations and workload-specific requirements, vendor diversification to reduce lock-in, hardware and feature heterogeneity, security and compliance considerations, and a desire to optimize licensing and cost. Multihypervisor deployments are found in large enterprises, cloud providers, and edge environments where teams or applications have distinct virtualization needs.

Key architectural considerations involve consistent storage for image portability, compatible VM formats, and drivers; network and device model differences; scheduling and resource management across hypervisors; and migration constraints such as live relocation and downtime. A governance layer is often needed to enforce policies, monitor usage, and ensure isolation between tenants operating on different hypervisors.

Management and interoperability challenges include disparate tooling, API fragmentation, and complexity in automation. While orchestration platforms and standardized formats help, portability between hypervisors is not always seamless. Pros include flexibility and risk reduction from vendor lock-in, while cons include increased complexity and potential performance variability. The trend toward standard interfaces and cross-hypervisor tooling continues to evolve.