Cloud Virtual Machine

A cloud virtual machine is a VM that is running on a cloud computing platform. Cloud VMs are created and managed using software that abstracts away the underlying hardware, making it possible to easily move them between physical servers.

Clouds are often categorized into three types: public, private, and hybrid.

• Public clouds sell services to anyone on the internet.
• Private clouds are internal IT infrastructure that is not made available to the public.
• Hybrid clouds combine aspects of both public and private clouds.

Virtual machines are divided into two categories, based on how they are created:

1. Preconfigured images also called virtual appliances or ready-made images. These are complete VMs that can be used without any further configuration.

2. Custom images also called user-created images, these are VMs that have been built from scratch, or modified from an existing image.

VM images can be stored in a number of different formats, the most common being VMDK and VHD.