Virtualization of operating system using type-2 Hypervisor

A virtualization is one of the very progressive fields in information technologies. It is widely used especially in the server virtualization because it offers better usage of hardware resources by using one physical hardware for various virtual host servers. The history of the virtualization starts nearly before fifty years and the development runs from the virtualization of the mainframe to the virtualization on the hardware level. The second IT field which uses a virtualization is a testing and an education which uses a specialized software for virtualization of the operating system. The task of this contribution is to compare a desktop virtualization software from the performance and the hard-disk drive usage point of view. The practical part is focused mainly on the comparison of the VMware Player and the Oracle VM VirtualBox as one of the best-known free software for the desktop virtualization. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016