IT pros get asked to explain complex concepts to non-technical folks fairly often, so much so that you might be especially skilled in this area. It’s a talent honed over the years, turning intricate jargon into relatable stories or analogies. Today, we challenge the IT pros in our community to do just that with a fundamental concept: the hypervisor.
Can you craft an analogy that simplifies the hypervisor’s role and makes it accessible to anyone?
For example, the hypervisor could be thought of like a librarian, neatly organizing the bookshelves and arranging the books or virtual machines on shelves like servers, making sure each gets enough space.
For those looking to explore more, check out our Insights series where we take a deeper dive into The Role of the Hypervisor . We also invite you to connect with us to see how we can enhance your infrastructure. Aaand you can’t miss out on all the spooky season fun, so check out our contest here .
20 Spice ups
A couple of ideas I had off-hand were the hypervisor could be thought of the well/pipes/plumbing that bridge water(host) resources to a home to be used in the sink/shower/washer(vms)
or possibly like a virtual shopper in a supermarket(host) building a meal(vm) from a recipe (vm specs/settings)?
3 Spice ups
Rod-IT
(Rod-IT)
3
A hypervisor is like a hotel manager who manages guests in a hotel. The hypervisor manages virtual machines (VMs) in a computer system. Just as the hotel manager ensures that guests have access to the resources they need, such as food, water, and electricity, the hypervisor ensures that VMs have access to the resources they need, such as CPU, memory, and storage. The hypervisor also ensures that VMs are isolated from each other so that they cannot interfere with each other’s operations. Just as the hotel manager can evict guests who misbehave, the hypervisor can terminate VMs that misbehave.
A hypervisor is like a referee in a soccer game. The hypervisor ensures that each virtual machine (VM) gets the resources it needs to function properly, just as a referee ensures that each team gets the resources it needs to play the game. The hypervisor also ensures that VMs are isolated from each other so that they can’t interfere with each other’s operations, just as a referee ensures that players don’t interfere with each other’s play. Finally, the hypervisor ensures that VMs don’t cheat by using more resources than they should, just as a referee ensures that players don’t cheat by breaking the rules of the game.
It can be tailored to suit the person it’s explained to.
7 Spice ups
benoitt
(BenoitT)
4
I use car analogies, a lot, so here’s one: a car hauler.
Most of us know about driving scenes in movies / TV and how the actors are sometimes not actually driving a car; they’re on a mobile platform surrounded by cameras, and being dragged around. So you think they’re driving a car, but really, they’re not.
So you can operate your VM (the “car”), either as part of your own PC:
or if you’re running a legit Virtualization Server, you have this:
5 Spice ups
A hypervisor is like a high-rise building. Instead of having 50 one story buildings (one for every floor) to manage you only have one physical building with 50 floors to manage. All floors share the same resources like water, electricity, elevator, etc…
6 Spice ups
thunter
6
A hypervisor is like a food court.
3 Spice ups
chivo243
(chivo243)
7
Hypervisor = Supervisor and Virtual Machine = Worker.
I do like hotel manager analogy. As long as the hotel manager isn’t Basel Fawlty…
@rod-it
5 Spice ups
merlinyoda
(MerlinYoda)
8
A hypervisor is the “Big Boss” for a bunch of systems that is really tight-lipped about the resources at its disposal. It decides what cut of the hardware resources the other “Little Boss” systems running under it get, potentially even overlapping cuts in the case of thin provisioning.
Granted, we usually talk of virtual systems running “on top” of a hypervisor but, from a hierarchical point-of-view, they are most definitely “under” the hypervisor given how their access to the hardware is entirely managed by said hypervisor.
2 Spice ups
netcacique
(netcacique)
9
A hypervisor is like a high end concierge at a fancy hotel. Anything you need the concierge gets for you. You don’t know how or where he gets it, but he does. You need tickets to a sold out show, he gets them, You need to be introduced to certain key player, he will get someone to introduce you. You need a reservation at a hot restaurant, he gets it for you. He does this for multiple clients (servers). The things that he gets are resources (for the servers).
2 Spice ups
matt7863
(m@ttshaw)
11
To me one aspect that analogies often miss is that a VM has no concept it is a vm sharing resource etc It thinks it is on bare metal of a specificaiton that the hypervisor is emulating.
Perhaps VMs are like us, we don’t know we are in the simulation/matrix. Wouldn’t that be ironic, we spend all our time virtualising when nothing is real anyway.
2 Spice ups
