What is a Virtual Machine? The easiest way to describe a virtual machine, is a computer, running on a computer. It’s an operating system, installed onto another operating system. Using virtualization technology, we can install an operating system, on top of another. This technology can be incredibly beneficial if you have a task that requires more than one computer. In the corporate world, virtual machines are becoming increasingly popular. Businesses can now run multiple operating systems from just one machine. In the consumer world, this can also be beneficial in a number of ways. Example, if you need to work with a piece of software that is not available on your host OS machine. At the time of this writing, there is no operating system that comes with preinstalled software that has the ability to create and run virtual machines. This software is what we call a Hypervisor.