Re: [uml-user] Is UML a Hypervisor?

[Fermín G. M. <fe...@ti...>]

Dear Brendan,

> Just wondering would UML be considered Hypervisor? If not what exactly 
> is a Hypervisor then?

Actually, it depens on who you ask to :), but IMHO, an hypervisor is the 
(usually tiny) piece of software that runs on top the hardware (bare 
metal) and manage virtual machines (which run on top the hypervisor) 
accesses to physical resources.

I think the definition at Wikipedia is accurate enough: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

In the case of UML running on top the host operating system, I think the 
right view is that the host operating systems acts as hypervisor, 
(although the term is not usually utilized in UML parlance) and UML are 
the virtual machines (running as UNIX processes) that run on top the 
OS/hypervisor. The main difference regarding other cases it is that an 
entire host operating systems is usually heavier than dedicated 
hypervisors (ej, mainframe virtualization, Xen, VMware ESX, etc.)

However, this topic is open to discussion... :)

Best regards,

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Fermín