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Containerization vs. Virtualization: A Paradigm Shift

Containerization vs. Virtualization: A Paradigm Shift

The key to understanding containerization is contrasting it with traditional virtualization.

Aspect Traditional Virtualization (VMs) Containerization
Unit of Abstraction Hardware. A Hypervisor virtualizes the physical server. Operating System. [cite_start]Containers virtualize the OS kernel.
What's Packaged A full Guest OS, the application, libraries, and binaries. Only the Application, its libraries, and dependencies.
Size Heavy (Gigabytes) due to the included OS. Lightweight (Megabytes) as it shares the host OS kernel.
Startup Time Slow (minutes) as the entire OS must boot. Near-instantaneous (seconds).
Performance Good, but with the overhead of a full OS. Excellent, near-native performance.
Density Lower; fewer VMs per server due to resource overhead. High; you can run many more containers on the same hardware.