Hardware Virtualization uses software to create a Virtual Machine (VM) that emulates a physical computer. This creates a separate OS environment that is logically isolated from the host server. By providing multiple VMs at once, this approach allows several operating systems to run simultaneously on a single physical machine.
Rather than paying for many under-utilized server machines, each dedicated to a specific workload, server virtualization allows those workloads to be consolidated onto a smaller number of more fully-used machines.