Virtualization Thesaurus

There are no uniform terms for virtualization technologies. Shown here are three major virtualization technologies, terms that Microsoft uses, the corresponding terms used in Directions publications, and some terms for the same technologies that have been used by other major vendors.

Virtualization technologies emulate a resource to a resource user to hide details of the resource from the user. For example, Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization is OS Virtualization because it emulates the components of the Windows OS needed to run the application (the resource) to an application (the resource user). Historically, virtualization technologies have often been named for the emulated resource. For example, virtual memory technology emulates uniform memory to an application, while storage virtualization emulates a uniform disk system to applications and computers.

Directions still follows the older convention, and so refers to Softgrid Application Virtualization and similar technologies (e.g., Altiris’ SoftGrid competitor) as “OS virtualization.” Microsoft and other vendors, in contrast, sometimes name virtualization technologies for the resource user, calling SoftGrid “application virtualization,” for example.