Virtualization Overview Date: 8/7/2012 SCF-FEF-SSS Author: Tyler Parsons
Agenda What is x86 Virtualization Why virtualize Virtualization Types Virtualization Methods Virtual Machine Accelerators Virtualization (Pro/Cons) Questions
What is x86 Virtualization Technology which allow multiple operating systems to simultaneously share the underlying physical hardware. Why virtualize : Security Portability Hardware Abstraction
Virtualization Types Type 1 (native) : Hypervisor runs directly on the hardware. VMware ESX XEN Type 2 (hosted) : Hypervisor does not run directly on hardware. Virtual Box VMware Workstation
Virtualization Methods Paravirtualization : Presents a common software interface to the underlying virtual machine for it to interact directly with the hypervisor. Full Virtualization Binary Translation : Replaces instruction sets which are not virtual machine friendly with ones that are. Hardware assisted Virtualization : Leverage special CPU instruction (AMD-V | Intel VT) on modern hardware to assist in virtualizing a virtual machine.
Virtual Machine Accelerators Paravirtualized Drivers : Hypervisor specific drivers/modules are installed within the virtual machine allowing it to make efficient system level calls to the underlying hypervisor (disk I/O, network). SR-IOV : Commonly used to share a PCI device among multiple virtual machines. I/O MMU (PCI Passthrough) : Allows a virtual machine to use an underlying piece of hardware directly (Ethernet, raid controller..).
Virtualization (Pro/Cons) Pro(s) Sandboxed Low Level ACL Portability Hardware Abstraction Con(s) Complexity Design Installation Maintainability LTS Performance
Questions?