How to Enable Virtualisation

Are you wondering how to enable virtualisation?

Here we will look at how to enable virtualisation, as well as what virtualisation is and what it is used for.

What is virtualisation?

When looking at how to enable virtualisation, a great starting point is understanding what virtualisation is. Virtualisation is the technology that allows the hardware of a computer to be partitioned or split up so that it can behave as one or more computers. There are lots of great applications for this from a personal level right up to an enterprise and corporate level.

What is virtualisation used for?

One of the foundational aspects of Cloud Computing, virtualisation has many other uses too. For corporations it can help servers to run more effectively. It can help to keep devices safe by ensuring that employees and users are on virtual machines. For individuals, the uses of virtualisation are often similar but on a smaller scale. This can mean having a several operating systems on one device, or testing what you can do in a program or operating system in a virtual environment so that you can be confident in not harming your device’s own setup.

How to Enable Virtualisation

How to enable virtualisation can refer to one of a number of things. It can mean entering your computer’s bios setup and enabling virtualisation under the CPU advanced settings so that you can have several virtual machines on one physical computer. This is known as CPU virtualisation. It can refer to having several virtual computers running off a server that users can log into. Finally, virtualisation can mean using a virtualisation program such as Hyper-V or VirtualBox.

Our focus here will be how to enable virtualisation using VirtualBox. The reason we are using VirtualBox is that it is an open source program and it is free. This means you can make it work how you need it to and not have to pay. Whilst we will be focusing on how to enable virtualisation on Windows 10, it is worth noting that VirtualBox can also run on Mac and Linux.

The first thing you will need to do is download and install VirtualBox. From here the process is relatively simple. Once in the program, you can select the kind of computer you want, including storage size and all other specifications. These can be as high-end or low-end as you need, depending on what your own computer allows for.

Now that you have a virtualisation program on your computer, virtualisation is effectively enabled. Depending on your computer there may be some allowances to be made, but now you can run a virtual computer.

If you have found this interesting, why not have a look at our article on How to Install an SSD or The Difference Between RAM and Hard Drive?

If Software Development is where your interests lie, have a look at our article on Python vs Java

If you’re interested and would like to learn more, consider our Level 5 Diploma in Information Technology Technical Support