Full Virtualization vs. Paravirtualization: Key Differences
Search IT Operations, Monday, March 11th, 2024
Full virtualization and paravirtualization both enable hardware resource abstraction, but the two technologies differ when it comes to isolation levels.
The idea behind all virtualization is to abstract a computer's hardware resources from the software that uses those resources. A hypervisor is a software tool installed on the host system to provide this layer of abstraction. Once a hypervisor is installed, OSes and applications interact with the virtualized resources abstracted by the hypervisor -- not the physical resources of the actual host computer.
There are different types of virtualization based on the level of isolation provided: full virtualization vs. paravirtualization.