Which statement best describes the relationship between containers and virtual machines?

Which statement best describes the relationship between containers and virtual machines?

• A. Containers share the host OS kernel and are lightweight.
• B. Virtual machines run on the host OS kernel.
• C. Containers require a separate OS per application.
• D. Virtual machines do not isolate workloads.

Answer: (A)

Containers and virtual machines differ in how they use system resources. Containers run as isolated processes on the same host OS and share the host’s kernel, while virtual machines emulate hardware and run separate operating systems under a hypervisor. This shared-kernel design makes containers lightweight and fast to start, since there’s no separate OS to boot. The statement that best describes their relationship is that containers share the host OS kernel and are lightweight. Because they reuse the host kernel and isolate applications with process-level boundaries, containers incur far less overhead than full VMs and can be created and destroyed quickly, which is ideal for scalable, modular deployments. Why the other ideas don’t fit: virtual machines don’t run on the host OS kernel; they operate on a hypervisor that provides virtual hardware and host separate OS instances. Containers do not require a separate OS for each application; they package only the app and its dependencies while sharing the host OS. And virtual machines do isolate workloads, since each VM has its own OS and virtualized hardware, providing strong isolation between workloads.

Containers and virtual machines differ in how they use system resources. Containers run as isolated processes on the same host OS and share the host’s kernel, while virtual machines emulate hardware and run separate operating systems under a hypervisor. This shared-kernel design makes containers lightweight and fast to start, since there’s no separate OS to boot.

The statement that best describes their relationship is that containers share the host OS kernel and are lightweight. Because they reuse the host kernel and isolate applications with process-level boundaries, containers incur far less overhead than full VMs and can be created and destroyed quickly, which is ideal for scalable, modular deployments.

Why the other ideas don’t fit: virtual machines don’t run on the host OS kernel; they operate on a hypervisor that provides virtual hardware and host separate OS instances. Containers do not require a separate OS for each application; they package only the app and its dependencies while sharing the host OS. And virtual machines do isolate workloads, since each VM has its own OS and virtualized hardware, providing strong isolation between workloads.