An Operating System is the software which communicates with the hardware of a computer system and works as the intermediary between all the applications and the hardware, which includes peripheral devices such as a printer, a computer mouse or a keyboard. When you run software, it sends requests to the OS using an API (Application Program Interface) and the communication is done through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Identical to a personal computer, hosting servers also have an Operating System which serves as a host for all of the software installed on them, which includes script apps or server-side software such as a flash server, a VOIP server, etcetera. A virtual machine can be created on a physical one, so you could install a guest OS on it and have a different system environment in contrast to the physical server host Operating System.