Virtualization as information technology

The author reviews the definition of the term «virtual» and its usage together with commonly employed notions, such as «Virtual Reality», «Virtual Worlds», etc. The main accent is on the interpretation of the virtualization as the information technology for virtual machines and virtual environment support. The necessary conditions for the efficient implementation of virtualization technology on computer architecture are discussed. Modern architecture expansions and software products supporting virtualization are reviewed. An example of the usage of virtualization technology for implementation of the application servers Transparent Fault Tolerance is presented.