Solution

• Virtualization systems support several mobile-oriented guests; however, the virtual machines tend to lack the touch interfaces and gesture-based controls associated with mobile devices.

• Virtualization systems share many common behaviors and use cases. To avoid too much repetition among the following sections covering specific products, I’ll try to cover a handful of general concepts and terminology here.

• The following list explains helpful details regarding common hardware and devices:

• CPU Most virtualization focuses on the x86 (32-bit) or x86_64 (64-bit) processors since these are the most popular chips used by operating systems.

• Most of these chips have built-in virtualization capabilities, such as the Intel VT-x (aka “vmx”) or AMD-V (aka “svm”) features that work hand-in-hand with virtualization software.

• RAM Systems need memory. Hosts should have as much as possible in order to be able to run their own programs in addition to a guest’s. The only complication here is deciding how much RAM to assign to a guest.

• Virtualization software will generally provide recommendations based on your particular hardware profile.

• Having 2GB of RAM is a good start more than 4GB for a 32-bit guest system is rarely necessary. Graphics cards have a separate memory area. Unless you plan to play games or run 3-D animations, it’s unlikely you’ll need more than a bare minimum here.

• Disk space Most modern operating systems need at least 8GB of space to get started. Once you start installing programs and tools (have I mentioned games enough yet?), the required amount quickly reaches into the 32GB or 64GB range.

• In this day of multiterabyte drives, this is rarely a problem. Plus, virtualization systems do not allocate the complete space for a drive upon creation.

• Devices The variety of devices that may be connected to a virtual machine depends on the sophistication of the virtualization software.

• At the very least, you’ll be able to connect a virtual keyboard and mouse (that act just like the keyboard and mouse from your host system).

• Networking A guest’s isolation from a network may be handled in many ways. A host only configuration restricts connectivity to the host and guest only, making the guest invisible and inaccessible to any other network device.

• A Network Address Translation (NAT) configuration treats the host as the guest’s access point to a network.