A Performance Comparison of Hypervisors

Virtualization has rapidly attained mainstream status in enterprise IT by delivering transformative cost savings as well as increased operational efficiency, flexibility and IT service levels. Intel and AMD have independently developed virtualization extensions to the x86 architecture called hardware virtualization. This and other recent hardware advances such as multicore processors are further fueling the adoption of virtualization.

While a full virtual service-oriented infrastructure is composed of a wide array of technologies that provide resource aggregation, management, availability and mobility, the foundational core of virtual infrastructure is the hypervisor.