Virtualization software allows a single host computer to create and run one or more virtual environments.

Virtualization software is most often used to emulate a complete computer system in order to allow a guest operating system to be run, for example allowing Linux to run as a guest on top of a PC that is natively running a Microsoft Windows operating system (or the inverse, running Windows as a guest on Linux).

Storage virtualization refers to the process of abstracting logical storage from physical storage.