A Guide to Virtual Machines (VMs)

Yes. VMs are isolated from the physical computer and from each other, which helps contain crashes, errors, and unsafe files. Cloud platforms also update their virtualization software regularly to keep environments secure.

Yes. Many teams use VMs for development or on-prem deployments. For production, MongoDB Atlas manages VM provisioning, scaling, backups, and monitoring directly on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, so teams don’t need to manage the underlying infrastructure.

VMs use virtual CPUs (vCPUs), which are scheduled portions of the host’s physical CPUs. To the VM, these behave like dedicated processors, allowing it to run applications as if it were a physical machine.

The two main types of virtual machines are system VMs, which run full operating systems, and process VMs, which support individual applications.

Yes. Tools like Oracle VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Player are free for personal use. Major cloud providers—including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud—also offer free tiers that let you run lightweight VMs at no cost, though usage limits apply.