What is the role of the hypervisor in virtualization?

The role of the hypervisor in virtualization primarily involves providing an environment where virtual machines (VMs) can operate independently and interact with the underlying physical hardware. This encompasses the allocation and management of physical hardware resources such as CPU, memory, and storage to each VM. The hypervisor abstracts the physical hardware, making it possible for multiple VMs to share and utilize the same resources while maintaining isolation between them.

By managing how these physical resources are distributed and ensuring that each VM has a fair share, the hypervisor ensures efficient use of the infrastructure while enabling flexibility in resource assignment. This dynamic allocation is crucial for optimizing performance and maximizing resource utilization in a virtualized environment.

The other options, while components of a virtualized environment, do not encapsulate the primary role of a hypervisor as accurately. For instance, enabling direct access to the physical hardware is generally contrary to the hypervisor's purpose, which is to abstract that access. Managing the lifecycle of virtual machines and handling network traffic are also functions associated with virtualization management tools and software, but they are not the defining role of a hypervisor.