VMware LLC is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, U.S. On November 22, 2023, Broadcom acquired VMware in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $69 billion, with the End-User Computing division of VMware then sold to KKR and rebranded to Omnissa. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. VMware ESXi, its enterprise software hypervisor, is an operating system that runs on server hardware. History Early history Technical background Virtualizing the x86 architecture was widely considered impractical in the late 1990s. Unlike the IBM System/370 mainframe architecture, which had supported virtualization since the 1960s, the x86 instruction set contained seventeen instructions that did not meet the Popek and Goldberg requirements for classical virtualization, behaving differently ...

In computing, virtualization (or virtualisation in Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) abbreviated as v12n, is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s with IBM CP/CMS. The control program CP provided each user with a simulated stand-alone System/360 computer. In hardware virtualization, the '' host machine'' is the machine that is used by the virtualization and the ''guest machine'' is the virtual machine. The words ''host'' and ''guest'' are used to distinguish the software that runs on the physical machine from the software that runs on the virtual machine. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a '' hypervisor'' or ''virtual machine monitor''. Hardware virtualization is not the same as hardware emulation. Hardware-assisted virtualization facilitates building a ...

Server may refer to: * Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and supplying them with food and drink as requested. * Altar server, a lay assistant to a member of the clergy during a Christian liturgy * Server (name), including a list of people * Server, any serving utensil; see List of serving utensils See also * Serve (other) * Service (other) * Cake and pie server * * {{disambiguation ...