Virtual machines (VMs) have the potential for adding many beneficial capabilities to computer systems, such as improved total cost of ownership (TCO) or availability. Could VMs be used to provide the following capabilities? If so, how could they facilitate this?

a. Test applications in production environments using development machines?

b. Quick redeployment of applications in case of disaster or failure?

c. Higher performance in I/O-intensive applications?

d. Fault isolation between different applications, resulting in higher availability for services?

e. Performing software maintenance on systems while applications are running without significant interruption?