VIRTUAL MACHINE DEFINITION COMPUTER SOFTWARE

Data processing is done on the thin client machine, but software and data are retrieved from the network. These virtualized resources can be accessed from any device that is able to connect to the server.Ī browser-based approach to using thin clients means that an ordinary device connected to the internet carries out its application functions within a web browser instead of on a remote server. It runs on an isolated partition of its host computer with its own CPU power, memory, operating system (such as Windows, Linux, macOS), and other resources. The resources and components of a physical server are not shared between multiple users. A virtual machine (VM) is a virtual environment that works like a computer within a computer. A physical server, also known as a ‘bare-metal server,’ is a single-tenant computer server, meaning that a specific physical server is designated to a single user. The operating system and applications are not shared resources, but they still physically live on a remote server. The physical server vs virtual server comparison should start with the definition. Users of a shared services thin client are limited to simple tasks on their machine like creating folders, as well as running IT-approved applications.ĭesktop virtualization, or UI processing, means that each desktop lives in a virtual machine, which is partitioned off from other virtual machines in the server. And that’s exactly what a virtual machine is.

With shared terminal services, all users at thin client stations share a server-based operating system and applications. Virtual Machine abstracts the hardware of our personal computer such as CPU, disk drives, memory, NIC (Network Interface Card) etc, into many different execution environments as per our requirements, hence giving us a feel that each execution environment is a single computer. There are three ways a thin client can be used: shared services, desktop virtualization, or browser based.

Virtual machine definition computer