

The applications run inside this isolated environment. Each VM instance has its own guest operating system. Running on top of the host operating system is a piece of software called a hypervisor that controls the VM instances. Let's learn how! How Does a Virtual Machine Work?Ī Virtual Machine or VM is the emulation of a physical computer inside a host machine. Both Virtual Machines (VMs) and Docker containers help you achieve this. To address the above challenges, it really helps if the applications run in isolated environments that you can replicate easily-independent of the system configuration. In such cases, managing dependencies across applications becomes difficult. Even during deployment, you have to configure the same environment on the server.ĭifferent applications also require multiple versions of a specific software, say, PostgreSQL. The installation steps can be potentially different depending on the operating system and system configuration.

However, setting up the development environment is a tedious process. In order to collaborate and work together, every developer on the team should configure their local development environment. When you work as part of a development team, each application requires installation of multiple third-party software and packages. Let's begin! Challenges in Application Development and Deployment Over the next few minutes, we'll go over how virtual machines and Docker containers work, and then summarize the key differences between the two.

But there are certain differences you should be aware of that will help you choose a VM or a Docker container depending on the application. In this guide, you'll learn the differences between a virtual machine and a Docker container.īoth virtual machines and containers help replicate the development environment, and manage dependencies and configurations better.
