Introduction: Virtualization helps to manage workloads by transforming traditional computing method and make it more scalable. Containerization is a lightweight alternative of virtualization, it involves encapsulating of an application in a container with its own operating system. The application can be run on any physical memory without caring about dependencies.

Key Difference b/w virtualization and Containerization:

Virtualization- It is a process of creating a virtual version of a physical object. In terms of computing hardware virtualization is the process of creating virtual instances of real hardware. We can run a complete operating system on virtual hardware.
Hypervisor- It is a software application that manages and monitors running virtual machine, also called a virtual machine monitor (VMM).

There are two main types of VMM, that is, native hypervisor and hosted hypervisor.

• Native hypervisor runs on the host machine and shares out resources between guest machines.
• Hosted hypervisor runs an application inside an operating system and supports each application run on an individual process.

Containerization – It is a logical packaging mechanism in which applications can be abstracted from the environment in which they run. This decoupling allows container-based technology to be deployed consistently and securely without caring about the target environment whether it is a private data center, public cloud or developer’s personal system.

Containerization provides a clean separation of application, as developers focus on application logic without caring about management and dependencies of version whereas the IT operation team mainly focuses on deployment and management without thinking about application details such as software version, configuration, etc.

Why We Prefer Container?

Instead of virtualizing the hardware stack with a virtual machine approach, we go for containers, virtualize the system at the operating system level with multiple containers.

Container provides –

• Consistent Environment
• Run Anywhere
• Isolation