IDG Contributor Network: Containers and virtual machines: Which is best for you?
If you want to stop someone from driving a car, you can take away the keys. Quick, easy and effective. Alternatively, removing the wheels and engine will work, too.A container is an OS extension that takes away keys, leaving the OS intact. A virtual machine (VM) reworks the architecture, separating the car from the wheels and engine. Taking the keys is easy, but the driver might have spares, and a car can be hot-wired in about a billion ways. Removing the wheels and engine is a lot of trouble, but the car won’t move without them. And when you mount snow tires, that removable wheel architecture is handy.Time-sharing computers Containers and VMs go back to the beginning of time-sharing, an outstanding advance in mid-twentieth century computing. A single time-sharing computer supports multiple users running multiple tasks at the same time. Each user thinks they control the entire machine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here