As of 2022 most of the prominent hypervisors requires hardware-assisted virtualization and will not work without it. While older hypervisors allowed hardware virtualization even without these features enabled, they were often recommended or required for virtual machines to achieve their most optimal performance. Modern computers have additional hardware capabilities to assist in virtualization called Intel VT-x and AMD-V, commonly just referred to as hardware-assisted virtualization.

The underlying machine used for the virtualization is referred to as the host, and the software that creates these virtual machines is called the hypervisor or virtual machine monitor ( VMM), while the virtual machines themselves are often referred to as guests. As few elements as possible are emulated, therefore most of the expected CPU performance can be obtained with a variable overhead depending on the system. Virtualization is commonly used to refers to hardware virtualization, the act of creating and running an operating system within a virtual machine ( VM) alongside code belong to other virtual machine(s) running on the same architecture and hardware (without converting no emulation). Snapshot or save state features allow saving a virtual machines current state, which can be useful for troubleshooting or testing.

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