Difference between Virtual Machines and Containers
Virtual machines and Containers are two ways of deploying multiple, isolated services on a single platform.
Virtual Machine
It runs on top of an emulating software called the hypervisor which sits between the hardware and the virtual machine. The hypervisor is the key to enabling virtualization. It manages the sharing of physical resources into virtual machines. Each virtual machine runs its guest operating system. They are less agile and have lower portability than containers.
Container
It sits on the top of a physical server and its host operating system. They share a common operating system that requires care and feeding for bug fixes and patches. They are more agile and have higher portability than virtual machines.
Let’s see the difference between Virtual machines and Containers.
| SNo. | Virtual Machines (VM) | Containers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | VM is a piece of software that allows you to install other software inside it, controlling it virtually as opposed to installing the software directly on the computer. | A container is software that allows different functionalities of an application independently. |
| 2 | Applications running on a VM system, or hypervisor, can run different operating systems. | Applications running in a container environment share a single operating system. |
| 3 | VM virtualizes the computer system (hardware). | Containers virtualize only the operating system (software). |
| 4 | VM size is generally very large, often in gigabytes. | Containers are lightweight, generally a few hundred megabytes, though the size may vary. |
| 5 | VMs take longer to run, depending on the underlying hardware. | Containers take much less time to start. |
| 6 | VMs use a lot of system memory. | Containers require far less memory. |
| 7 | VMs are more secure, as the underlying hardware isn’t shared between processes. | Containers are less secure since virtualization is software-based, and memory is shared. |
| 8 | VMs are useful when you need all of the OS resources to run various applications. | Containers are useful for maximizing running applications using minimal servers. |
| 9 | Examples of Type 1 hypervisors: KVM, Xen, VMware. VirtualBox is a Type 2 hypervisor. | Examples of container platforms: RancherOS, PhotonOS, Docker. |