The differences between hypervisors and containers

While the information given in the preceding paragraphs about containers shapes a viewpoint on what a container can do for you and how it can benefit your developers, I think that talking about differences between a hypervisor and a container helps to shape a picture of what a container really looks like. And more importantly, how you will start using it in the real world.

A hypervisor, such as Hyper-V or VMware, provides you with the ability to spin up many different virtual machines. As many VMs as your hardware can handle. Unfortunately, the number of VMs that you spin up can be seriously limited because each virtual machine is running an entire operating system. Everything from the boot kernel to the filesystem and processes are contained inside each and every virtual machine. This also means that each VM is vulnerable to operating system level attacks, and consumes even more resources when you start adding protectors onto it, like antivirus...