Mastering Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

4.1. The Need to Support Multiple Hypervisors

Administrators deploying virtualization solutions typically do so with the intent of reducing costs and complexity in their environment. The reduction in cost comes from the consolidation of multiple workloads onto fewer computers by using virtual machines. However, to reduce complexity, an administrator also needs to aggregate virtual machine hosts, virtual machines, virtual machine clusters, library resources, and workload resources under one interface. The ability to aggregate these resources is an important step in standardizing procedures and policies across technology disciplines.

VMM's management model enables access to heterogeneous environments through a single interface serving as an abstraction ...