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Virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on top of an existing operating a single computer system. For example, imagine booting your Fedora Linux system and, from within that Fedora system, launching another Linux operating system (such as another Fedora Linux instance, or an Ubuntu Linux session). In this situation, your original Fedora Linux session is known as the ''host'' operating system and any other operating systems you run using virtualization are referred to as ''guest'' operating systems.
Virtualization has come to prominence in recent years because it provides a way to fully utilize CPU and resource capacity of a server system whilst providing stability (in that if one virtualized guest system crashes, the host and any other guest systems continue to run).
Virtualization is also useful in terms of trying out different operating systems without having to configure dual boot environments. For example, you can try out Ubuntu Linux without have having to re-partition the disk and reboot from Fedora Linux. You simply start up virtualized version of Ubuntu as a guest operating system.
There are a number of ways to implement virtualization on Fedora. Options include VMware and KVM. One of the most popular technologies on Fedora is called Xen. Red Hat engineers have invested considerable effort into making Xen easy to install, configure and manage on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora. Much of these improvements appeared in Fedora 7. For this reason, this chapter will focus on Virtualization in Fedora and will assume you are using Fedora 7 or later.
