Hypervisor
Software that creates and manages virtual machines by allocating physical resources between them.
Type 1 (bare-metal) hypervisors like Proxmox VE and VMware ESXi run directly on hardware for maximum performance. Type 2 hypervisors like VirtualBox run on top of an existing OS. Proxmox is the most popular choice for homelabs because it combines VMs, containers and ZFS in one free platform.
Related articles
Virtual Machine(VM)
A software-based computer that runs its own operating system on top of physical hardware via a hypervisor.