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Cloud Computing Beginner

What is Virtual Machine (VM)?

A software-based emulation of a physical computer that runs its own operating system and applications.

Virtual machines run on a hypervisor that abstracts physical hardware, allowing multiple VMs to share a single physical server. Each VM has its own OS, CPU allocation, memory, and disk, providing complete isolation.

VMs are heavier than containers (full OS per VM) but provide stronger isolation. Popular hypervisors include VMware ESXi, KVM (Linux), and Hyper-V (Microsoft). Cloud VMs include EC2 (AWS), Azure VMs, and Compute Engine (GCP).

Related Terms

Spot Instance
Discounted cloud compute instances that use spare capacity at significantly lower prices but can be interrupted with short notice.
Auto Scaling
Automatically adjusting the number of computing resources based on current demand to maintain performance and optimize costs.
Multi-Cloud
A strategy of using services from multiple cloud providers to avoid vendor lock-in and leverage best-of-breed capabilities.
Cloud-Native
An approach to building applications that fully exploit cloud computing advantages like scalability, resilience, and flexibility.
Kubernetes Pod
The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, consisting of one or more containers that share storage, network, and lifecycle.
Object Storage
A storage architecture that manages data as objects with metadata and unique identifiers, ideal for unstructured data at scale.
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