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The hypervisor mechanism is a fundamental part of virtualization infrastructure that is primarily used to generate virtual server instances of a physical server. A hypervisor is generally limited to one physical server and can therefore only create virtual images of that server (Figure 1). Similarly, a hypervisor can only assign virtual servers it generates to resource pools that reside on the same underlying physical server. A hypervisor has limited virtual server management features, such as increasing the virtual server’s capacity or shutting it down. The virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) provides a range of features for administering multiple hypervisors across physical servers.

Figure 1 - Virtual servers are created via individual hypervisor on individual physical servers. All three hypervisors are jointly controlled by the same VIM.

Hypervisor software can be installed directly in bare-metal servers and provides features for controlling, sharing and scheduling usage of hardware resources, such as processor power, memory, and I/O. These can appear to each virtual server’s operating system as dedicated resources.

Related Patterns:

• Automated Administration
• Bare-Metal Provisioning
• Direct I/O Access
• Direct LUN Access
• Dynamic Scalability
• Elastic Disk Provisioning
• Elastic Network Capacity
• Elastic Resource Capacity
• Hypervisor Clustering
• Load Balanced Virtual Server Instances
• Load Balanced Virtual Switches
• Multipath Resource Access
• Non-Disruptive Service Relocation
• Persistent Virtual Network Configuration
• Platform Provisioning
• Rapid Provisioning
• Redundant Physical Connection for Virtual Servers
• Resource Pooling
• Resource Reservation
• Service State Management
• Shared Resources
• Synchronized Operating State
• Workload Distribution
• Zero Downtime