Virtualization lets one physical server run many isolated operating systems. The software that makes this possible is the hypervisor, also called a virtual machine monitor. It divides the server's CPU, memory, storage and network interfaces among virtual machines (VMs), each of which believes it has its own hardware. Network engineers need this knowledge because many network functions, from firewalls to SD-WAN controllers to Catalyst Center components, now run as VMs, and because servers bring their own virtual switches into the network.
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