AWS Certification Practice Exam 2025 - Free Amazon Web Services Practice Questions and Study Guide

A hypervisor is primarily used to create a virtualized environment by allowing multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on a single physical host. It abstracts the underlying hardware, enabling the efficient allocation of resources such as CPU, memory, and storage among the various VMs. This technology allows for better resource utilization, easier management of multiple operating systems, and improved isolation between different workloads.

In a virtualized environment, the hypervisor acts as an intermediary between the hardware and the operating systems of the virtual machines, facilitating communication and resource sharing. This capability is critical in cloud computing and data centers, where there is a demand for scalability, flexibility, and efficient use of resources.

The other choices pertain to different functions: managing network traffic relates to network management systems, encapsulating physical hardware can refer to container technologies but does not describe the purpose of a hypervisor, and automating system backups relates to data protection solutions rather than virtualization. Understanding the hypervisor's role is crucial for comprehending how cloud infrastructures and virtualization technologies operate.