Virtualization vs Containerization

Virtualization vs Containerization

Virtualzation

• Technique of importing guest operating system on the top of the Host OS
• Brings abstraction to the hardware

Advantages

• Multiple OS in same machine
• Easy maintenance and recovery
• Lower cost of ownership

Disadvantages

• Multiple VMs lead to unstable performance
• Hypervisoers are not as efficient as Host OS, as it takes more resources from host OS
• Long boot-up process(approx. 1 minute)

Containerization

• It is technique to bring virtualization to the operating system level
• Although it is type of virtualization
• Brings abstraction to the software

Advantages over Virtualization

• Containers on same OS kernal are lighter and smaller
• Better resource utilization compared to VMs
• Short boot-up process(1/20th of a second)

Containerization is not replacing virtualization, it is just next step in evolution. Although there are many circumstances where virtualization is a better option.