How do containers differ from traditional virtual machines?

Containers differ from traditional virtual machines in that they provide resource separation at the operating system level. This means that containers share the host operating system’s kernel while running isolated applications. Unlike traditional virtual machines, which encapsulate an entire operating system along with the application, containers package the application and its dependencies but utilize the same OS kernel, leading to more lightweight, faster, and efficient deployments.

This approach allows containers to start up quickly and consume fewer resources compared to virtual machines, which require a hypervisor to layer additional operating systems. By operating at the application layer, containers can streamline the development and deployment processes, enhancing agility in software development. This architecture also facilitates scalable and efficient usage of hardware resources, as multiple containers can run on a single host without the substantial overhead associated with separate operating systems for each virtual machine.