virtual machine
termcloud
Stands for: VM
A complete simulated computer with its own kernel, isolated from its neighbours by the hypervisor rather than by the operating system.
Its own kernel is the whole difference from a container, and it decides where each belongs: virtual machines cost more to start and run, and give a boundary that survives a guest kernel bug. That is why untrusted or mutually hostile workloads still land on separate machines rather than separate namespaces. The operational inheritance is snapshots - freezing and restoring a whole system is the most useful thing virtualisation gave operations, and the most dangerous thing it gave anyone testing a restore they never rehearsed.
Also known as: VM, guest