{"id":1087,"date":"2026-06-04T03:10:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T03:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2026-06-04T03:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T03:14:11","slug":"virtualization-explained-virtual-machines-containers-and-vrfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"Virtualization Explained: Virtual Machines, Containers, and VRFs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi, today I am going to be discussing virtualization specifically on VMs (Virtual Machines), containers and VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding.) Virtualization when it comes to networking and IT refers to taking computer resources such as storage, RAM, CPU and virtualizing it. There are a lot of reasons on why to virtualize hardware but one of the primary benefits is that one machine can host multiple guest operating systems. The reason it is able to do so is because since the hardware has been virtualized, the resources can now be logically split, so instead of dedicating 4 CPUs to one OS, you can create 4 guest operating systems and give them one vCPU each. This allows the system resources to be split however the user wishes, so if the total RAM is 64gb, and there is a RAM hungry application running inside a VM the user is able to allocate as much as it desires up until the limit. Virtualization provides the flexibility as if the user owns multiple machines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isolation- <\/strong>Another benefit of virtualization is security and fault isolation. On one computer or server, if it gets infected with malware or the OS crashes the whole system will be affected. However, if there are four guest OS on the same server if one of them receives malware or the OS crashes, that machine is the only one impacted. The other 3 guest OS remain free from any impact that has happened at that one OS.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encapsulation- <\/strong>Virtualization also provides encapsulation, meaning that the entire state of a VM can be saved onto files. This gives great portability because VMs can be copied, backed up, and moved as easily as files. Because of this encapsulation, a VM can exist and be used on one server one day, but be used on another server the next day. It is not attached to only one machine unlike a non-virtualized environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hypervisor- <\/strong>One of the main components that allows virtualization to occur is a \u201chypervisor.\u201d A hypervisor (also known as Virtual Machine Monitor) is a specialized layer of software that enables the creation and management of VMs by separating (abstracting) the computer or servers physical resources from the operating system. Before virtualization, the OS was in charge of all the resources, but when a hypervisor is installed (only for type 1) the hypervisor is now in charge of the hardware resources. The main role of a hypervisor is to manage the systems hardware resources such as CPU, memory, storage and networking, dynamically partitioning and allocating them across multiple VMs.

Type 1 Hypervisor- <\/strong>There are two types of hypervisors, type 1 and type 2. They both allow guest OS to exist but at different levels and control. A type 1 hypervisor (also known as a bare metal hypervisor) is a virtualization software that runs directly on a computer\u2019s\/server\u2019s physical hardware without requiring a traditional host OS underneath it. It acts as the intermediary between the physical hardware (the host) and multiple guest operating systems (the guests.) Common type 1 hypervisors are VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Type 2 Hypervisor- <\/strong>A type 2 hypervisor (also known as a hosted hypervisor) is a virtualization software layer that is installed and run as an application on top of a traditional host OS such as windows, macOS, or linux. In this setup, the physical hardware sits at the bottom, followed by the host OS, then the type 2 hypervisor, and finally the guest VMs running above the hypervisor. Common type 2 hypervisors are VMware Workstation and Oracle Virtualbox. A type 2 hypervisor is generally slower than type 1 hypervisor because they run on top of a host OS, which adds an extra layer between the VMs and the physical hardware. This adds additional overhead since memory, storage, and networking (network interface card) requests must first pass through the host OS before reaching the hardware, leading to higher latency and reduced performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Containers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that we\u2019ve discussed VMs, there is a more lightweight option for certain applications called \u201ccontainers.\u201d These are applications that can be used without the overhead of a full VM. Containers are lightweight, portable units of software that package an application along with all its dependencies such as libraries, runtime environment, and configuration files. Unlike VMs, containers do not include a full OS but instead share the host operating system\u2019s kernel. Although it shares the kernel, the container keeps the application isolated from other processes on the hardware. So although containers share the same hardware and OS, one container cannot see the data being used in another container. Containers are known for having environmental consistency, this means that a container is guaranteed to run the exact same way regardless of where it is deployed. This means that how the app looks and functions on a laptop will look and function the same way on an enterprise grade server.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Container Engine-<\/strong> Containers in and of itself are just the files needed for it to run. In order for a container to turn from a file to an actual application that can be used, a container engine is used. A container engine is a software component responsible for creating, running, and managing containers on a host system. A container engine essentially acts as the runtime environment for containers, by taking a container image and turning it into a running container by performing tasks such as resource allocation, process isolation, networking and storage management. This turns a dead file into a live and active application that can be utilized. A common and known engine that you\u2019ve probably heard of is \u201cDocker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Container Orchestrator- <\/strong>Containers are a great option as they are lightweight, and provide a great way to scale and load balance applications. Companies with applications that have great demand can use tens to hundreds of containers. When there are hundreds of containers, it is unable to be maintained manually in an efficient way. Container orchestrators were made to deal with this issue. Container orchestrators are a system that automates the deployment, scaling, management, and coordination of containers across a cluster of servers. Instead of managing containers individually, container orchestrators ensure that containers are running on the correct server, load balanced, restarted if failures occur, and scaled up or down based on application demand. A popular and known container orchestrator is \u201cKubernetes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VRF<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The last kind of virtualization topic I will discuss today is Virtual Routing and Forwarding. If I were to summarize it in an analogy, the VRF is the VLAN for layer 3 (not literally.) VRF is a technology that allows multiple separate routing tables to exist on the same physical router. Each VRF instance operates as an independent virtual router with its own routing table, interfaces and forwarding decisions. You will commonly see VRF being used in MPLS environments, where service providers need to manage multiple customers on the same hardware and infrastructure while needing to keep their routing information separate. This is very useful because private addressing can be used in this MPLS system without any issues. This allows multiple customers to share the same IP address ranges (private) without the router getting confused or packets being mistakenly sent to the wrong customer.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, today I am going to be discussing virtualization specifically on VMs (Virtual Machines), containers and VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding.) Virtualization when it comes to networking and IT refers to taking computer resources such as storage, RAM, CPU and virtualizing it. There are a lot of reasons on why to virtualize hardware but one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1092,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/networkingnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}