Virtualization in the Cloud Era: Understanding the relationship between VMs, containers and serverless

This article examines the complex landscape of virtualization technologies that have transformed modern cloud infrastructure, focusing on the relationship between virtual machines (VMs), containers, and serverless computing. The article analyzes how these paradigms represent a spectrum of increasing abstraction and decreasing developer control, each offering distinct advantages for specific workloads and organizational contexts. The article provides practitioners with a decision framework for selecting appropriate virtualization approaches. The article investigation reveals that rather than converging on a single paradigm, successful organizations implement polyglot virtualization strategies that leverage each technology's strengths while mitigating limitations through cross-paradigm integration patterns. The article explores how VMs continue to excel in regulated environments requiring strong isolation, containers dominate microservices architectures and CI/CD pipelines, and serverless computing optimizes cost and developer productivity for event-driven workloads. The article further analyzes orchestration ecosystems across paradigms and examines emerging trends including container-native virtualization, expanded serverless capabilities, and advanced security innovations that are reshaping the virtualization landscape. This holistic perspective provides essential guidance for architects and decision-makers navigating the complex trade-offs of modern cloud infrastructure.