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Which of the following is typically used for hardware abstraction?
- a VM
- an API
- a hypervisor
- mezzanine card
Explanation:
Of the available choices, only a hypervisor is used for hardware abstraction. A hypervisor is software that has two roles: the abstraction of physical hardware and the creation of virtual machines (VMs). Hypervisors are capable of virtualizing the physical components of computer hardware. Virtualization enables the creation of multiple VMs that can be configured and run in separate instances on the same hardware. Hardware abstraction is the use of software to emulate physical hardware. Hardware abstraction enables device-independent software development and allows a given VM to become portable between physical devices.
A VM is a software environment that behaves as physical computer hardware in that it typically runs a separate operating system (OS) from the host OS. However, a VM does not itself abstract the hardware on which the host OS is installed. VMs provide the hardware environment for guest OSes and the applications they run by making calls to the hypervisor, which then makes calls to either the host OS or the bare-metal server, depending on the type of hypervisor installed on the device.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is typically used to enable an application to perform functions on a remote framework, database, or application. For example, representational state transfer (REST) is an API architecture that uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or HTTP Secure (HTTPS) to enable external resources to access and make use of programmatic methods that are exposed by the API. A web application that retrieves user product reviews from an online marketplace for display on third-party websites might obtain those reviews by using methods provided in an API that is developed and maintained by that marketplace.
A mezzanine card is a computer hardware component that can be plugged into expansion slots on a main board. Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) B-Series blade servers use mezzanine cards to add a variety of network interfaces to the system. For example, the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1280 is a mezzanine card that adds 10-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) Ethernet port and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capabilities to a Cisco UCS B-Series blade server.
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