What technology allows running multiple operating systems on a single physical machine?

Virtualization is the technology that enables multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single physical machine. It achieves this by creating virtual instances of physical hardware. Each virtual machine (VM) operates as if it is an independent computer, running its own operating system and applications while sharing the underlying hardware resources.

This technology utilizes a hypervisor, which acts as an intermediary between the physical hardware and the virtual machines. The hypervisor can manage the distribution of resources such as CPU, memory, and storage to each VM, ensuring efficiency and isolation between them. This makes virtualization highly effective for server consolidation, testing environments, and development processes, as well as providing flexible resource allocation.

Other technologies mentioned involve different concepts. While containerization focuses on packaging applications and their dependencies within containers to run them in a lightweight environment, it does not create separate operating systems. Isolation refers broadly to separating processes or applications from one another but doesn't specifically indicate running multiple operating systems. Emulation, while it can mimic the hardware of one system on another, does not typically lead to the operational efficiency and resource sharing that virtualization supports for running multiple OS instances.