Reference material for virtual machines, hypervisors, cloud service models, thin clients, and virtual desktop infrastructure.
Virtualization separates software environments from the physical computer; cloud service models and virtual desktops determine where applications and desktops run and who operates the underlying infrastructure.
| Topic | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Virtualization and hypervisors | Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors, virtual-machine resources, snapshots, and safe testing |
| Cloud service models and VDI | SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, thin clients, hosted applications, and virtual desktops |
| Do not conflate | Why |
|---|---|
| Snapshot and backup | A snapshot is a rollback aid, not an independent recovery copy. |
| Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors | One runs directly on hardware; the other runs on a host operating system. |
| Hosted application and virtual desktop | An application is delivered remotely; a virtual desktop provides a complete remote desktop session. |
| Thin client and cloud model | A thin client is an endpoint; SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS describe service responsibility boundaries. |