What is the main purpose of a hypervisor in a virtualized environment?

The primary function of a hypervisor in a virtualized environment is to create and manage virtual machines. A hypervisor acts as an intermediary layer between the hardware and the virtual machines, enabling multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single physical machine.

By managing the allocation of system resources like CPU, memory, and network access, the hypervisor ensures that each virtual machine operates independently while utilizing the underlying physical resources efficiently. This enables better resource utilization, scalability, and isolation between different virtual machines, which is essential in cloud computing and enterprise environments.

In contrast, server storage management, backup solutions, and operating systems installation are tasks that can be facilitated within the virtual machines or supported by other software, but they do not define the fundamental purpose of the hypervisor itself. The hypervisor's primary focus is on the virtualization aspect, creating a controlled environment in which multiple systems can run without interference.