What is the antonym of 'virtual machine'?

What is the antonym of 'virtual machine'?

A virtual machine (VM) is a piece of software pretending to be a piece of hardware. There can be virtual servers, virtual desktops...

I googled around a bit and did not find anything.

I am creating a list that has Servers, Desktops and Virtual Machines; where Servers & Desktops are understood to only include non-VMs, I need to add two more items to the list

• Severs VM & (virtual machine antonym)
• Desktop VM & (virtual machine antonym)

I need a word to replace "(virtual machine antonym)" I was thinking "Hard" but not sure that is appropriate.

The Audience is IT Professionals.

Solution 1:

Let's consider a definition of a virtual machine:

A virtual machine is a software computer that, like a physical computer, runs an operating system and applications. The virtual machine is comprised of a set of specification and configuration files and is backed by the physical resources of a host. Every virtual machine has virtual devices that provide the same functionality as physical hardware and have additional benefits in terms of portability, manageability, and security.

Out of this definition we explicitly see an antonym physical computer. But i would use physical machine instead. And if we surf the web, we find the usage quite common:

A physical computer (sometimes called a physical machine or a physical box) is a hardware-based device, such as a personal computer. The term is generally used to differentiate hardware-based computers from software-based virtual machines (VMs). (Source)

"Virtual Machine to Physical Machine Migration - VMware" (PDF document)

Solution 2:

Before the widespread use of VMs, in the context of server hosting, we used to call this simply a 'dedicated server' to differentiate between that and a 'shared server'.

Today, I'd be inclined to call it a 'bare metal server' if you were going to allow the customer to install whatever OS they wanted. (as 'bare metal' effectively means 'computer without an operating system'. (see the Jargon File entry)

Digging further into the Jargon File suggests 'real' as the antonym to 'virtual', but I'd be more inclined to use Matt Gutting and Othya's recommendation of 'physical' before I used 'real' in this context.

Solution 3:

The phrase I've most often used by engineers as the anytonym of virtual machine or virtualised environment is bare metal.

Though in practice, this is almost always used in a sentence which contrasts it with running in a virtual environment. The phrase also carries connotations of running on a platform without a hypervisor.

Example sentence: No, our app isn't running inside a virtual machine, it's running on bare metal.

Solution 4:

You could consider real machine, taking a cue from the existing references to real memory and virtual memory.

Like a virtual machine, real memory is implemented in the most efficient way in terms of time performance. Generally this is done by using the RAM (random access memory) directly. Virtual memory is functionally identical to real memory (at some level in the software functionality) but it is implemented in a less performance-efficient way, using emulation, using other hardware, such as a hard drive (or even using a tape in the old days).

Both real memory and virtual memory use physical hardware.

A real machine is implemented in the most performance-efficient way, which is to have a processor and all of the related computer peripherals implemented as purpose-made to implement the required functionality. A virtual machine implements with less performance efficiency because there is added emulation functionality to implement the virtual machine in the hardware.

Both real machines and virtual machines use physical hardware.