The Rise of Virtualization
Operating systems originally ran directly on the hardware itself and provided services to applications. With CP-67 on the IBM System/360 Model 67 and Virtual Machine Facility/370 (VM/370) on System/370, IBM introduced the notion of virtual machine, where the operating system itself runs under the control of a hypervisor, instead of being in direct control of the hardware. VMware popularized this technology on personal computers. Over time, the line between virtual machines, monitors, and operating systems was blurred:
- Hypervisors grew more complex, gaining their own application programming interface, memory management or file system.
- Virtualization becomes a key feature of operating systems, as exemplified by Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 or HP Integrity Virtual Machines in HP-UX.
- In some systems, such as POWER5 and POWER6-based servers from IBM, the hypervisor is no longer optional.
- Applications have been re-designed to run directly on a virtual machine monitor.
In many ways, virtual machine software today plays the role formerly held by the operating system, including managing the hardware resources (processor, memory, I/O devices), applying scheduling policies, or allowing system administrators to manage systems.
Read more about this topic: History Of Operating Systems
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