virtualized

Virtualized refers to hardware, software, or services that are presented and operated as virtual rather than physical entities. It is commonly used to describe technologies that abstract and pool computing resources, allowing multiple independent workloads to run on shared infrastructure.

In computing, virtualization creates virtual instances of servers, storage, networks, or operating systems. A hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor, allocates physical resources to guest virtual machines. Type 1 hypervisors run directly on hardware; Type 2 run on a host operating system. Containers offer lighter-weight virtualization at the operating system level, sharing the host kernel while isolating applications. Data processing environments often use a combination of virtual machines and containers.

Virtualized environments improve resource utilization, scalability, and portability. They enable rapid provisioning, easier testing, disaster recovery planning, and workload isolation. They can complicate management and introduce performance overhead, depending on workload and implementation. Security and licensing considerations may arise due to multi-tenant configurations.

Storage virtualization consolidates physical storage into abstract pools, presenting virtual volumes to systems. Network virtualization decouples logical networks from physical devices, enabling software-defined networking and network function virtualization.

In data centers and cloud computing, virtualization is foundational, enabling flexible, scalable, and cost-effective deployment of services.