Understanding the hardware environment

An operating system can run on the processor in one of the following modes:

BASIC: A single operating system image that owns the entire processor or all processors.
LPAR: Depending on the model, a processor can be divided into as many as 60 logical partitions, with each partition running its own operating system image.
VIRTUAL: IBM® offers VM and VIF for Linux systems. Both VM and VIF are hypervisors (an operating system that allows other operating systems to run). VM supports hundreds to thousands of guests. Each guest produces its own operating system image. As an example, one guest using Linux, and another using z/OS®, all on the same hardware.