Container is a term that describes an isolated IT hosting environment which runs its own Operating System (OS) alone, which might or might not be a different type of OS than the one of the underlying physical server (infrastructure). Unlike the other Virtual Servers (Virtual Machines), the so-called Containers are created through a virtualization technique called OS Virtualization. It is a software assisted virtualization, which allows any computer hardware to run multiple instances with separate OS concurrently.

The instances (VEs), also containers, work like a separate, real computers. Any software application running on a standard  Operating System can use all resources – CPU power, memory and other computing resources as well as files and folders – of a Container based computer.

Containers crated thought an OS Operating virtualization does not feature the same level of flexibility as the Virtual Machines created with full virtualization, for example. A Container cannot use an OS different from the one that runs on the underlying physical server, or a different guest kernel. If the underlying host runs any Linux distribution, the Containers that run on top of it cannot run Windows.

The terms “Shared Cloud” and “Shared Cloud Hosting” are not very different from Cloud Hosting. They also refer to an Internet Hosting service delivered from a group of servers. The term Shared Cloud Hosting (Shared Vloud) is not  precisely defined yet. However, a “Shared Cloud Hosting” could be considered a service delivered from a computer system in which the computing resources (processing resources) are distributed. To be considered as “Shared” any Cloud hosting service must be powered by a software platform which does not create isolated virtual instances. In a Shared Cloud, all data resides in a shared storage system or network (shared pool). Cloud accounts (name based or IP based virtual hosting) share the computing resources of all servers part of the system.