CompTIA PenTest+ Practice Test

Which component manages the virtual machine environment and interacts with the hardware?

1. Hypervisor/Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

2. System Emulator

3. Firmware

4. Operating System

The correct answer is: Hypervisor/Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

The hypervisor, also known as the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), is the component that manages the virtual machine environment and facilitates interaction between the virtual machines (VMs) and the underlying hardware. It acts as an intermediary between the VMs and the physical hardware, allowing multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a host machine by allocating the necessary resources such as CPU, memory, storage, and networking capabilities. By effectively managing these interactions, the hypervisor ensures that each VM operates in an isolated environment, providing stability, security, and efficient resource utilization. Hypervisors can be classified as either Type 1 (bare-metal), which run directly on the hardware, or Type 2 (hosted), which run on top of an existing operating system. In contrast, system emulators replicate the functionality of a different computing environment, firmware is low-level software that directly interacts with the hardware, and an operating system manages a single computer's software and hardware resources but does not directly provide virtualization capabilities in the way a hypervisor does.