What is the difference between containerization and virtualization?

Containerization and virtualization are technologies for isolating applications, but they work differently.

• Virtualization creates full virtual machines with a separate operating system on top of a hypervisor. Each VM contains its own OS kernel, which requires more resources.

• Containerization uses the capabilities of the OS kernel (e.g., Linux namespaces and cgroups) to isolate processes within containers. Containers share the host's kernel, making them lighter and faster.

Key differences:

• Resource intensity: containers are lighter and start faster.
• Isolation: VMs are more isolated, containers share the kernel.
• Portability: containers are easier to move and scale.

Example: Docker is a popular containerization tool, while VMware is an example of virtualization.