A Brief Introduction To Virtualization Technologies

Armand Rousso
 Virtualization

In computing, virtualization is a broad term that

refers to the abstraction of computer resources.
Platform virtualization
Resource virtualization
 Platform Virtualization

Emulation or simulation
Native virtualization and full virtualization
Hardware enabled virtualization
Partial virtualization
Paravirtualization
Operating system-level virtualization
Application Virtualization
 Emulation or simulation
allowing an unmodified "guest" OS for a
completely different CPU to be run.
Examples:
Bochs
PearPC
VirtualPC
QEMU(without acceleration)
 Native and Full Virtualization
the virtual machine simulates enough hardware to
allow an unmodified "guest" OS (one designed
for the same CPU) to be run in isolation.
Examples:
VirtualBox
Virtual PC
Vmware
QEMU
Win4Lin
XEN/Virtual Iron
 Hardware enabled virtualization
the virtual machine has its own hardware and
allows a guest OS to be run in isolation.
Intel VT (IVT)
AMD virtualization (AMD-V)
Examples:
VMware Fusion
Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Workstation
 Partial virtualization
the virtual machine simulates multiple instances
of much (but not all) of an underlying hardware
environment, particularly address spaces.
 Paravirtualization
the virtual machine does not necessarily simulate
hardware, but instead (or in addition) offers a
special API that can only be used by modifying
the "guest" OS.
Terminologies
Hypervisor, hypercall
Enomalism
Examples:
XEN, KVM, Win4Lin 9x
Operating system-level virtualization
virtualizing a physical server at the operating
system level, enabling multiple isolated and
secure virtualized servers to run on a single
physical server.
Examples:
Parallels Workstation
Linux-VServer, Virtuozzo
OpenVZ, Solaris Containers
FreeBSD Jails
Chroot ?
 Application Virtualization
typically for the purpose allowing application
binaries to be portably run on many different
computer architectures and operating systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Appl
ication_Virtual_Machines
Examples:
.NET CLR
JVM
Script Languages:Python,Ruby,Javascript...
 Resource Virtualization

RAID
SAN
Channel bondings
VPN/NAT
Multiprocessor and multi-core
Cluster and Grid computing
Partitioning
 Virtualization Under Linux(1)

UML (User Mode Linux)

http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/
KVM (Kernal-based Virtual Machine)
From Linux-2.6.20
http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki

XEN
http://xen.xensource.com/
 Virtualization Under Linux(2)
QEMU
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
QEMU Accelerators
KQEMU
QVM86
VirtualBox (released in January 2007)
KVM with QEMU
 Virtualization Under Linux(3)
Bochs (GPLed, very slow)
A portable x86 and AMD64 PCs emulator mostly
written in C++ and distributed as free software under
GPL.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/
VirtualBox(commercial&open source, fast)
http://www.virtualbox.org/
VMWare (Workstation,Server,Player)
 Virtualization Under Linux(4)
SWSOFT Virtualizations
http://www.swsoft.com
http://www.parallels.com/
http://openvz.org/
Linux-VServer
http://linux-vserver.org/
Compare with:
FreeBSD Jail
Solaris Containers (Zones)
 Linux Virtualization in Windows(1)

VMWare
Virtual PC
VirtualBox
Bochs
QEMU
 Linux Virtualization in Windows(2)

CoLinux Cooperative Linux

http://www.colinux.org/
Topologilinux
http://www.topologilinux.com
 Linux Virtualization in Windows(3)

MinGW Minimalist GNU for Windows

Cygwin
GNUWIN32
GNUWINII
UnxUtils
UWIN
SFU
Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX,aka Interix
 Comparison of virtual machines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtu
al_machines
 History of virtualization development
1965 IBM M44/44X paging system 2005 Intel VT
1965 IBM System/360-67 virtual memory hardware 2006 AMD VT
1967 IBM CP-40 (January) and CP-67 (April) time-sharing 2005 XEN
1972 IBM VM/370 run VM under VM 2006 VMWare Server
1997 Connectix First version of Virtual PC 2006 Virtual PC 2006
1998 VMWare U.S. Patent 6,397,242 2006 HP IVM Version 2.0
1999 VMware Virtual Platform for the Intel IA-32 2006 Virtual Iron 3.1
architecture
2007 InnoTek VirtualBox
2000 IBM z/VM
2007 KVM in Linux Kernel
2001 Connectix Virtual PC for Windows
2007 XEN in Linux Kernel
2003 Microsoft acquired Connectix
2003 EMC acquired Vmware
2003 VERITAS acquired Ejascent
2005 HP Integrity Virtual Machines
 References
Wikipedia for any virtualization Terminologies
Virtual Linux:An overview of virtualization methods, architectures, and implementations
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linuxvirt/
 Questions

Q&A