VMs are virtual machines powered by QEMU:

• Separate OS.
• Completely separate kernel.
• Completely isolated from the host OS.
• Some additional overhead.
• Devices such as GPUs, drives or USB controllers have to be passed in entirely.
• Limited support for passing through single HDDs, but not recommended.

LXC containers:

• Share the same kernel as the host.
• Less overhead.
• Greater performance.
• Constrained to only being Linux, but any distribution.
• As LXC processes use the same kernel, it means sharing access to things like GPUs and storage is significantly easier, and with less overhead.
• To access storage on the host, just bind mount it in with almost 0 overhead - No PCI pass-through necessary.

Container

Docker

fsck from host

Qemu-guest-agent

VM

Windows

CLI