Vocabulary and Acronyms in Hyper–V

• APIC: Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller is a device which allows priority levels to be assigned to its interrupt outputs.
• Hypercall: The Hypercall is the interface for communication with the hypervisor.. Guests communicate with the hypervisor via Hypercalls.
• Management Operating System (OS):  Manages machine–level functions such as device drivers, power management, and device hot addition/removal. The management OS is the only OS that has direct access to physical memory and devices.
• Guest Operating System (OS): A virtual machine that hosts a guest operating system –All access to physical memory and devices by Guest OS is provided via the Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus) or the hypervisor.
• IC: Integration component s allow guest OS’s to communication with the hypervisor and management OS more effectively.
• Legacy Device: A virtualized device that mimics an actual physical hardware device so that guests can use the typical drivers for that hardware device.
• Synthetic(High Speed)Device: A virtualized device not attached to physical hardware so that guests need a driver (virtualization service client) to that high speedBus. The driver uses the VMBus to communicate with the Hypervisor.
• Physical Hard Disk: A physical disk in the physical machine can be used by virtual machines directly.
• Enlightenment: An improvement to a guest OS to make it aware of VM environments and increases overall performance.

• Virtualization Stack: A collection of software components in the management OS that work together to support VMs. The virtualization stack works with and sits above the hypervisor. It also provides management capabilities. The following items are part of that stack.
• VMBus: Is a channel–based communication method used forinter–guest communication and device enumeration on systems with multiple active virtualized guests. Access to the VMBus is installed with the Hyper–V Integration Components.
• VSP: Virtualization Service Provider –Resides in the management OS and provide high speeddevice support to guest OS’s over the Virtual Machine Bus (VMBus).
• VID:  The virtualization Infrastructure Driver provides guest management services, virtual processor management services, and memory management services for virtual machines..
• VMMS:  The Virtual Machine Management Service is responsible for managing the state of all VM’s in guest OS’s.
• VMWP: The Virtual Machine Worker Processes a user mode component of the virtualization stack. The worker process provides virtual machine management services from the Windows Server 2008 instance in the management OS to the guest OS’s. The Virtual Machine Management Service creates a separate worker process for each running VM.
• VSC: Virtualization Service Client is a high speeddevice that resides ina guest OS. VSCs utilize hardware resources that are provided by Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs) in the management OS. They communicate with the corresponding VSPs in the management OS over the VMBus.
• WinHv:  The Windows Hypervisor Interface Library (WinHv) is a bridge between a management OS system’s drivers and the hypervisor which allows drivers to call the hypervisor using standard Windows calling methods.
• WMI: The Virtual Machine Management Service exposes a set of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)–based APIs for managing and controlling virtual machines.
• MSR: Memory Service Routine
• I/O stack: Input/output stack

See corresponding post for Vmware here