virtual peripheral

A peripheral device simulated by the operating system. If the device is offline, the operating system stores the output from the application until the device becomes available.

In a virtual machine environment, each guest operating system communicates with the virtual machine control program (the virtual machine monitor), which, in turn, communicates with the peripheral device directly or redirects the call to the host operating system or to a service operating system (see virtual machine monitor). See virtual machine and virtual device.
