Different brand of Virtualization

technologies available

Castro Yoga
Jooust
 Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM)
• Kernel Virtual Machine hypervisor has been
developed to take gain of the hardware extensions
that are available on the x86 platforms It is a
loadable module for the Linux kernel that allows it
to use the processor virtualization extensions. This
functionality is what KVM adds by running the
guest kernel and user level processes in the non-
root rings. Because of the loadable module into the
Linux kernel, KVM runs in the privileged root mode
and traps the appropriate instructions from the
guest machine. KVM takes advantage of the
emulated I/O
• devices already incorporated in x86 emulation
software QEMU to make available virtual
devices such as memory and hard disk to the
guest machine. Since KVM leverages the
features such as scheduling, memory
management found in both the Linux kernel
and the virtualization capability in Hardware
Assist extensions, the code base is fairly small
(approximately 10,000 lines)
 VMware
• VMware is one of the first companies to develop
successful virtualization solutions. Today they are a
powerful player in both user and enterprise level
virtualization products. Much of VMware's technology
is built on the concepts of dynamic binary translation
and direct execution. Their products vary according to
features, cost and support options. Next is a lists a
summary their most important products
– VMware Player:
– VMware Workstation
– VMware Server
– VMware ESX
 VMware Player
• this is a free application that has the least
amount of functionality. The way It functions
is that it only allows users to run VMware
virtual machines that has already been
created with other VMware utilities such as
the VMware workstation.
 VMware Workstation
• is a commercial but there is a version free for
educational use, it creates virtual machines on
the desktop. It supports manages virtual
machines, clone virtual machines as well as
network configurations for connecting
multiple virtual machines.
 VMware Server
• is a free application and provides features that
VMware Player does not have. new virtual
machines can be created and manage using a
web access system. It installs as an application
on both windows and Linux operating systems
 VMware ESX
• is a bare-metal hypervisor (type 1) intended
for use in VMware's enterprise management
solutions. It is installed and runs directly on
the server hardware its management is
implemented by software known as VCenter.
 VirtualBox

• VirtualBox is an open-source full virtualization

solution, originally developed by the German
company Innotek and later acquired by Sun in
2008 Sun was then later acquired by Oracle in
2009 VirtualBox relies on the same general
techniques as VMware products to provide full
virtualization capability. It is capable of
software only virtualization
• through dynamic code recompilation techniques,
some of which is based on QEMU source code.
VirtualBox is also capable of leveraging virtualization
enabled hardware such as Intel VT or AMD-V.
VirtualBox is packaged in two different ways. Most
of the software is licensed under the GNU Public
License and available as open source software.
Oracle also maintains a free (for personal and
academic evaluation), but closed source version
which has a few additional features such as the
ability to support USB be devices both locally and
remotely. The closed version also provides the
capability to manage the machine remotely through
the Remote Desktop Protocol
 Xen
• Xen is an open source Paravirtualization product
licensed under the GNU Public License Older
versions of Xen could only support guest operating
systems whose source was available due to the
need to add the hypercall interface. This would
typically narrow the range of available operating
systems to Linux, BSD, Solaris and other UNIX-like
operating systems. According to Natario with the
recent advancement of hardware assist technology,
Xen has been able to offer the full virtualization
techniques because it has been restructured to use
virtualization extensions to provide support for
• Xen is a modified version of the Linux kernel
that runs as a virtualization layer next to the
hardware. In Xen terms, operating systems are
referred to as domains. The first domain that
is created when Xen begins life is called
Domain 0 or Dom0. This first domain
maintains a special privileged state within Xen
and is responsible for arbitrating access to all
the system devices on the hardware. So it is
important the Dom0 system have all the
proper drivers for the host hardware.
• The kernel for the Dom0 domain must be
modified to work with the Xen hypervisor
which is sitting between the Dom0 domain
and the hardware. Once the Dom0 domain is
running, additional guest domains (or DomU
in Xen terms) may be started. DomU guest
kernels require different modifications for
running on the hypervisor than the DomU
domain requires. Their modifications
represent the typical Paravirtualization
modifications described in earlier.
 Linux VServer and OpenVZ
• Linux VServer and OpenVZ are two popular
container virtualization technologies available
for the Linux operating system They way they
operate is by modifying the original Linux
kernel and add to it the functions that allow for
container virtualization to occur. The
modification it does to the kernel allows for the
strict isolation of different containers in relation
to resources such as allocation of the memory,
usage of CPU and Utilization of the network.
• They also provide user space utilities that allow
for the management of the containers. The
drawback is that is a requirement that the host
kernel must be patched, All the virtual servers
should share the same kernel which means
that the all of them must be Linux, they have
No clustering or process migration capability
making host kernel and host computer is a
single point of failure for all virtual servers
 User Mode Linux

• User mode Linux makes possible for multiple

Linux guest systems to run as an application
within a Linux Host system, offering security
and safety without affecting the host
environment's configuration or stability It is
considered to be a type of Paravirtualization
and it’s developed and maintained by Jeff Dike
who first documented in 2001
• It was first developed as patch for Linux
kernel, but it’s now integrated into the main
development of the recent versions of Linux
kernel. It is considered a low performing
solution compared to competing technologies,
such as OpenVZ and Xen