Partitioning

• Multiple applications and operating systems can be supported within a single physical system
• Servers can be consolidated into virtual machines on either a scale-up or scale-out architecture
• Computing resources are treated as a uniform pool to be allocated to virtual machines in a controlled manner

Isolation

• Virtual machines are completely isolated from the host machine and other virtual machines. If a virtual machine crashes, all others are unaffected
• Data does not leak across virtual machines and applications can only communicate over configured network connections

Encapsulation

• Complete virtual machine environment is saved as a single file; easy to back up, move and copy
• Standardised virtualised hardware is presented to the application - guaranteeing compatibility