Virtualization is not a new technology. However, the cloud has allowed us to abstract our programs further away from the underlying hardware. We began our journey creating AWS EC2 instances. The mechanism that the instance uses is the virtual machine (VM). Using a VM gives us the ability to share hardware at the operating system level. Windows, Linux, and iOS instances can all be run on VMs. Putting a hypervisor on top of the bare metal hardware gives Amazon the ability to run multiple OSes on a single piece of hardware or host. Packing many VMs onto a single host is a great way to increase utilization of expensive servers. Amazon's introduction of this model to the public created the modern-day cloud.Â
While AWS were selling, and securing, their spare capacity for multi...