Distinguishing features of virtual machines

Though containers have clearly gained impressive momentum in so brief a period, virtual machines continue to have salient and distinguishing features. For example:

• A VM may run any operating system designed for the host's architecture; for example, Android-x86, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Windows Server, and even desktop OSs can all run on separate virtual machines on a Proxmox VE host, provided the host has adequate hardware resources.

Ubuntu 15.04 virtual machine hosted on Proxmox VE and accessed via the SPICE console option in the PVE's Web interface

• One VM may host many containers; when we look for creative and savvy data center solutions, we would like to stay consistently aware that OS virtualization and system virtualization have a complementary relationship, rather than a competitive or antagonistic one. VMs still offer more thorough isolation, for example, than containers.
• VMs and containers call for different security concerns and approaches...