Virtualization

What is Virtualization?

 Virtualization is a concept of specially designed

software’s which provides safe and smooth
environment to run multiple operating systems
Simultaneously, on a single physical hardware/Server
(Ruest et al., 2009, p.25,30).
 Origin of x86 Virtualization

 VMWare, a U.S. software company founded in 1998, was

the first to successfully virtualize the x86 architecture.
 Now, VMware is one of the leading virtualization software
vendor for MS Windows and Linux servers
 What is a Hypervisor?

 A hypervisor or Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is a

piece of computer software, that allows to create and
run virtual machines
 What is virtualization stack?

 A virtualization stack is the collection of resources that,

along with the hypervisor, make up the Microsoft Hyper-V
environment.
 In a computing context, a stack is an ordered pile.
 Components of the virtualization stack in Hyper-V include
virtual machine processes, emulated devices,
management services and the user interface.
 Types of Hypervisors

 Hosted / Full Virtualization (Type 2)

 VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation
 Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) by Linux Red Hat

 Para-virtualization / OS Assisted Virtualization

 Older Version of XEN Server

 Bare Metal / Hardware Assisted (Type 1)

 VMWare ESXi Server
 Citrix XEN Server
 Microsoft Hyper – V
 Microkernalized vs. Monolithic
 The methodology for how a type 1 hypervisor will allocate
available resources, and how it handles driver use, 
 Depends on whether the hypervisor is a Microkernalized or
Monolithic Hypervisor (shown below).
 Monolithic
 For modern-day computing to occur, you need access to 4 resources: CPU,
memory, storage, and networking.
 In a monolithic hypervisor, allocation of all resources is handled by the
hypervisor itself,
 as is control of all hardware access and knowledge of all device drivers that
talk to the physical hardware.
 This methodology is very efficient with very little overhead, but there are
some drawbacks.
 Being all device drivers reside within the hypervisor, VMware has to be very
picky about what systems will support their hypervisor and which ones will
not.
 This is why, VMware ESXi will only run on a very selected number of systems.
 Whereas, Microsoft has a vast hardware support with Hyper-V.
 If there is a malfunction or security issue with a driver at the hypervisor layer
it would potentially affect every VM on that host.
 This is a downside that VMware has been working persistently to reinforce.
 Microkernalized
 Microsoft already had a kernel with wide reaching and reliable hardware
support.
 There was no need to re-invent the wheel. It made sense for them to leverage
their kernel and incorporate it into the Hyper-V product.
 In the Microkernalized model the distribution of resources are managed and
assigned a little differently
 Hyper-V role is installed on a host system and is actually placed directly on
top of the host hardware
 The host OS is P2Ved (And that Microsoft called the parent partition (or
parent VM).
 This parent VM handles all VM access to storage and networking
 While, the hypervisor layer continues to handle access to CPU and memory.
 Parent VM is essentially a Windows Server 2012 (R2) or Windows Server 2008
(R2) VM
 It has the added benefit of having access to the Windows kernel for it’s
hardware support.
 Storage and networking is the place where device drivers are needed
 Microkernalized
 Now, the drivers are strictly used to provide storage and networking access to
the VMs running on the Hyper-V host,
 Although, VMs themselves still need drivers to be able to talk to the physical
hardware.
 Unlike the Monolithic model, each Hyper-V VM holds and maintains it’s own
device drivers.
 This make the Microkernelized model more secure and stable as one driver
getting compromised or crashing outright will only affect a single VM instead
of everything on the host.
 This also means that as far as hypervisors are concerned, the attack surface
for Hyper-V is smaller than that of VMWare ESXi.
 There is one downside to the Microkernelized methodology.
 Parent VM provides access to storage and networking, if it has any issues
(crash, hang…etc..etc) your VMs could be affected as well.
 This is why it is generally best practice to run the windows server OS, in the
parent VM, in core mode as to reduce the amount of bloatware and un-
needed software.
 This simplifies the OS and makes it much less likely that a malfunction will
occur.
 Virtualization Benefits
 Make use of underutilized server hardware
 Less hardware required
 Low Utility bills,
 Low accommodation expenses
 Easy & Economical System Administration,
Centralized server Environment (Minimum Technical
Personnel Required )
 Highly Portable (Live Migrations of Virtual Machines)
 Virtualization Benefits

 Runs Legacy Software on new platforms

 High Security (Isolated Environment)

 Easy Backups (Snapshots)

 Highly Resilient ( Replicas can be created)

 High Availability

 Cloud Computing IaaS Service Model is also referred

to as Virtualization Layer