Western Governors University (WGU) ITEC2022 D386 Hardware and Operating Systems Essentials Practice Exam

Containers differ from traditional virtual machines primarily in their architecture and resource utilization. The key distinction lies in the fact that containers are designed to be lightweight and more portable compared to traditional virtual machines.

Unlike virtual machines, which include a complete guest operating system along with the application and associated binaries and libraries, containers share the host operating system kernel and only include the application and its dependencies. This means that containers do not need to carry the overhead of an entire operating system, which allows them to start up faster, consume less memory, and be more efficient in their use of system resources. This lightness and portability enable containers to be easily deployed across different environments, enhancing flexibility in development and deployment processes.

In contrast, traditional virtual machines require more resources due to the presence of the full operating system. Therefore, the correct answer highlights this key advantage of containers in comparison to virtual machines, focusing on their lightweight nature and ease of portability.