In spite of the enormous versatility that virtualization and virtual machines (VMs) provide, there are limits to hypervisors and system performance when running Hyper-V with Windows 11. It's important for endpoint owners and system administrators to recognize and account for these potential limitations during system planning and administration.
The value of virtualization is clear for large and powerful enterprise servers, but the value proposition for endpoint systems can be more challenging to understand. Windows 11 is primarily intended for endpoint systems, such as desktop and laptop computers, where processors, memory and storage resources are far more limited than enterprise servers.
Virtualization does not create new resources -- it abstracts existing physical resources into logical equivalents which admins can provision and manage as independent virtual instances. Every new VM still consumes a portion of the local computer's available resources. Additional computing overhead is also imposed to handle the constant translation between physical and logical resources on the computer.
From a practical standpoint, the combination of limited computing resources and additional computing overhead will restrict most endpoint systems to just a few VMs -- rarely more than two or three. When an administrator deploys virtualization on Windows 11, it's typically to reduce the user's computer hardware needs.
A typical endpoint computer installs a single OS and can only run software applications supported by that OS. When a user needs to run software that the local OS can't support, they need to install a different OS or use a different computer with the necessary OS. Neither option is particularly desirable. However, installing Hyper-V and creating a VM allows the user to create another logical computer on their existing system, and install a suitable OS such as Linux -- which does not affect Windows 11 running on the host computer. Then, they can install and run the desired application in that VM, all on the same physical computer.
Software developers routinely use desktop systems to code, build and test software. It's important to isolate the new build from the underlying system to ensure that any dependencies -- such as drivers and DLL files -- do not affect the host system. Developers will typically create a VM to serve as a blank system, allowing them to construct a suitable operating environment -- along with a preferred OS, drivers and other dependencies -- for bug testing, stress testing and other evaluations of the new build. In this case, the virtualization provides a quick and convenient means of creating a new, isolated and independent virtual computer without the need to buy actual hardware.