What, in the simplest of terms, is virtualisation?

Question

Assume your talking to an absolute moron.

I'm honestly not kidding use no technical words. Pretend your explaining it to a very small child or a politician.

Answer 1

In computing, virtualization involves the process of presenting computing resources in ways that users and applications can easily get value out of them, rather than presenting them in a way dictated by their implementation, geographic location, or physical packaging. In other words, it provides a logical rather than physical view of data, computing power, storage capacity, and other resources.

Answer 2

* The technique of managing and presenting storage devices and resources functionally, regardless of their physical layout or location.

* In storage, virtualization is a means by which multiple physical storage devices are viewed as a single logical unit. Virtualization can be accomplished in–band (in the data path) or out-of-band. Out–of–band virtualization does not compete for host resources, and can virtualize storage resources irrespective of whether they are DAS, NAS or SAN.

* Virtualization is a technique for deploying technologies. Virtualization creates a level of indirection or an abstraction layer between a physical object and the managing or using application. Storage virtualization refers to the presentation of a simple file, logical volume or other storage object (ie. Disk drive) to an application in such a way that allows the physical complexity of the storage to be hidden from both the storage administrator and the application

* In computing, virtualization involves the process of presenting computing resources in ways that users and applications can easily get value out of them, rather than presenting them in a way dictated by their implementation, geographic location, or physical packaging. In other words, it provides a logical rather than physical view of data, computing power, storage capacity, and other resources.