What type of hypervisor has the virtualization software installed directly on the machine hardware?

What type of hypervisor has the virtualization software installed directly on the machine hardware?

• A. Hosted/Type 2 Hypervisor
• B. Hybrid Hypervisor
• C. Bare-Metal/Type 1 Hypervisor
• D. Container Hypervisor

Answer: (C)

When virtualization software runs directly on the machine hardware, it sits on the bare metal with no host operating system managing it. This is a bare-metal, or Type 1, hypervisor. It has direct access to CPU virtualization features and I/O resources, which lets it efficiently allocate hardware to multiple virtual machines and provide strong isolation between them. In contrast, a hosted hypervisor runs on top of a separate host operating system, which adds an extra software layer and dependence on the host OS for drivers and resource access. This extra layer can introduce overhead and slower boot and runtime performance. A container-based approach isn’t about hardware virtualization in the same way—it shares the host OS kernel and isolates processes rather than running separate virtual machines with their own hardware abstraction. The term hybrid hypervisor isn’t the standard model described here.

When virtualization software runs directly on the machine hardware, it sits on the bare metal with no host operating system managing it. This is a bare-metal, or Type 1, hypervisor. It has direct access to CPU virtualization features and I/O resources, which lets it efficiently allocate hardware to multiple virtual machines and provide strong isolation between them.

In contrast, a hosted hypervisor runs on top of a separate host operating system, which adds an extra software layer and dependence on the host OS for drivers and resource access. This extra layer can introduce overhead and slower boot and runtime performance. A container-based approach isn’t about hardware virtualization in the same way—it shares the host OS kernel and isolates processes rather than running separate virtual machines with their own hardware abstraction. The term hybrid hypervisor isn’t the standard model described here.