Short for
virtual machine monitor, in
virtualization technology it is the
host program that allows a computer to support multiple
and identical execution environments. The VMM provides the underpinnings for
virtualization management, which includes policy-based automation, virtual hard
disk, life cycle management, live migration and real-time resource allocation.
You can basically think of the VMM as the part of the code in
firmware that manages either multiple
operating systems or multiple instances of
the same operating system on a single computer system. Its job is to manage the
system's
processor,
memory
and other resources to allocate what each operating system requires. VMMs
provide the means, through
emulation, to divide a
single, physical server or
blade, allowing multiple
operating systems to run securely on the same
CPU and
increase the CPU utilization.
