Virtualization is one of the two really hot topics in IT today (the other being SOA). However, virtualization can mean a great many different things, depending on your point of view. For me, being basically an operating system guy, it means running multiple operating sytems on a single physical piece of hardware.

When it comes to virtualizing operating systems, this is nothing new. In fact, the first hypervisor was IBM's CP/67 back in 1967! This tool is the ancestor of today's z/VM hypervisor for IBM's System z mainframes.

Today, there are a great many different hypervisor solutions for x86 servers, including VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server, SWSoft Virtuozzo, and of course the open source Xen project. This evening I will be presenting an overview of what hypervisors are and go deeper into what the Xen hypervisor is at the KWLUG meeting in Kitchener, ON.