• Welcome! Use the login menu to access:

    • Customer Portal

      Solarwinds customers can download purchased software, renew maintenance, & more in our updated Customer Portal.

    • Community

      After logging in, community members can rate & review SolarWinds software & participate in forums on thwack.com.

    • Partner Portal

      SolarWinds channel partners will find all the resources they need in the Partner Portal, including exclusive partner tools.


SolarWinds IT Management Glossary

Back to Index »

What is a Host OS

A host OS (operating system) is the first OS installed on a machine to enable a machine to support multiple virtual operating systems. The host OS accesses the physical machine’s resources, such as its physical memory and processor speed, and allocates those resources to virtual OSs as needed. A host OS is not necessarily the same as the OS that it hosts.

SolarWinds FREE Tools Related to Host OS

VM Console

What do you do when a virtual machine is running amuck—or not running at all—and you just want to restart it without slogging through vCenter™ or vSphere™? With our free VM Console you can bounce that blue-screened troublemaker, track up/down status, take snapshots of all your VMs, and more!

Download Now »

VM Monitor

Track virtualization health at-a-glance with X-ray vision into your ESX Servers! Our free VM Monitor continuously monitors a VMware ESX Server and its virtual machines and delivers detailed virtual machine health statistics including VM name, guest OS, and VM state, as well as processor, memory, and network usage.

Download Now »

SolarWinds Products Related to Host OS

Virtualization Manager

Virtualization Manager makes it easy to manage all the aspects of your virtual infrastructure by providing the tools to control VM sprawl, eliminate bottlenecks, optimize performance, track configuration changes, manage capacity, and track and showback departmental and business unit usage and costs. Learn More »