Type 1 and Type 2 Hypervisor

Hypervisor is mainly classified into two

Type 1/Native/Bare Metal Hypervisor
Type 2/Hosted Hypervisor

Type 1 Hypervisor

• This is also known as Bare Metal or Embedded or Native Hypervisor.
• It works directly on the hardware of the host and can monitor operating systems that run above the hypervisor.
• It is completely independent from the Operating System. 
• The hypervisor is small as its main task is sharing and managing hardware resources between different operating systems.
• A major advantage is that any problems in one virtual machine or guest operating system do not affect the other guest operating systems running on the hypervisor.

Examples:

VMware ESXi Server,

 Microsoft Hyper-V,

Citrix/Xen Server,

Type 2 Hypervisor

• This is also known as Hosted Hypervisor.
• In this case, the hypervisor is installed on an operating system and then supports other operating systems above it.
• It is completely dependent on host Operating System for its operations
• While having a base operating system allows better specification of policies, any problems in the base operating system a ffects the entire system as well even if the hypervisor running above the base OS is secure.

  Examples:

VMware Workstation,

Microsoft Virtual PC,

Oracle Virtual Box,