Hypervisor

A hypervisor (or virtual machine monitor, VMM) is computer software, firmware or hardware that
creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is
called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest
operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating
systems. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources:
for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This
contrasts with operating-system-level virtualization, where all instances (usually called containers) must
share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux
distributions with the same kernel.

The term hypervisor is a variant of supervisor, a traditional term for the kernel of an operating system: the
hypervisor is the supervisor of the supervisor,[1] with hyper- used as a stronger variant of super-.[a] The term
dates to circa 1970;[2] in the earlier CP/CMS (1967) system, the term Control Program was used instead.

Contents
Classification
Mainframe origins
Operating system support
x86 systems
Embedded systems
Security implications
Notes
References
External links

Classification
In their 1974 article, Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures, Gerald J.
Popek and Robert P. Goldberg classified two types of hypervisor:[3]

Type-1, native or bare-metal hypervisors

These hypervisors run directly on the host's hardware to control the hardware and to
manage guest operating systems. For this reason, they are sometimes called bare metal
hypervisors. The first hypervisors, which IBM developed in the 1960s, were native
hypervisors.[4] These included the test software SIMMON and the CP/CMS operating system
(the predecessor of IBM's z/VM). Modern equivalents include AntsleOS[5], Microsoft Hyper-V
and Xbox One system software, Nutanix AHV (https://www.nutanix.com/products/acropolis/vi
rtualization), XCP-ng (https://xcp-ng.org/), Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle VM Server
for x86, POWER Hypervisor[6] and VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) and Xen.
Type-2 or hosted hypervisors
 These hypervisors run on a
conventional operating system
(OS) just as other computer
programs do. A guest
operating system runs as a
process on the host. Type-2
hypervisors abstract guest
operating systems from the
host operating system.
Parallels Desktop for Mac,
QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware
Player and VMware
Workstation are examples of
type-2 hypervisors.

The distinction between these two types Type-1 and type-2 hypervisors
is not always clear. For instance, Linux's
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
and FreeBSD's bhyve are kernel modules[7] that effectively convert the host operating system to a type-1
hypervisor.[8] At the same time, since Linux distributions and FreeBSD are still general-purpose operating
systems, with applications competing with each other for VM resources, KVM and bhyve can also be
categorized as type-2 hypervisors.[9]

Mainframe origins
The first hypervisors providing full virtualization were the test tool SIMMON and IBM's one-off research
CP-40 system, which began production use in January 1967, and became the first version of IBM's CP/CMS
operating system. CP-40 ran on a S/360-40 that was modified at the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center to
support dynamic address translation, a feature that enabled virtualization. Prior to this time, computer
hardware had only been virtualized to the extent to allow multiple user applications to run concurrently, such
as in CTSS and IBM M44/44X. With CP-40, the hardware's supervisor state was virtualized as well,
allowing multiple operating systems to run concurrently in separate virtual machine contexts.

Programmers soon implemented CP-40 (as CP-67) for the IBM System/360-67, the first production
computer system capable of full virtualization. IBM first shipped this machine in 1966; it included page-
translation-table hardware for virtual memory, and other techniques that allowed a full virtualization of all
kernel tasks, including I/O and interrupt handling. (Note that its "official" operating system, the ill-fated
TSS/360, did not employ full virtualization.) Both CP-40 and CP-67 began production use in 1967. CP/CMS
was available to IBM customers from 1968 to early 1970s, in source code form without support.

CP/CMS formed part of IBM's attempt to build robust time-sharing systems for its mainframe computers.
By running multiple operating systems concurrently, the hypervisor increased system robustness and
stability: Even if one operating system crashed, the others would continue working without interruption.
Indeed, this even allowed beta or experimental versions of operating systems—or even of new hardware[10]
—to be deployed and debugged, without jeopardizing the stable main production system, and without
requiring costly additional development systems.

IBM announced its System/370 series in 1970 without the virtual memory feature needed for virtualization,
but added it in the August 1972 Advanced Function announcement. Virtualization has been featured in all
successor systems (all modern-day IBM mainframes, such as the zSeries line, retain backward compatibility
with the 1960s-era IBM S/360 line). The 1972 announcement also included VM/370, a reimplementation of
CP/CMS for the S/370. Unlike CP/CMS, IBM provided support for this version (though it was still
distributed in source code form for several releases). VM stands for Virtual Machine, emphasizing that all,
and not just some, of the hardware interfaces are virtualized. Both VM and CP/CMS enjoyed early
acceptance and rapid development by universities, corporate users, and time-sharing vendors, as well as
within IBM. Users played an active role in ongoing development, anticipating trends seen in modern open
source projects. However, in a series of disputed and bitter battles, time-sharing lost out to batch processing
through IBM political infighting, and VM remained IBM's "other" mainframe operating system for decades,
losing to MVS. It enjoyed a resurgence of popularity and support from 2000 as the z/VM product, for
example as the platform for Linux on IBM Z.

As mentioned above, the VM control program includes a hypervisor-call handler that intercepts DIAG
("Diagnose", opcode x'83') instructions used within a virtual machine. This provides fast-path non-
virtualized execution of file-system access and other operations (DIAG is a model-dependent privileged
instruction, not used in normal programming, and thus is not virtualized. It is therefore available for use as a
signal to the "host" operating system). When first implemented in CP/CMS release 3.1, this use of DIAG
provided an operating system interface that was analogous to the System/360 Supervisor Call instruction
(SVC), but that did not require altering or extending the system's virtualization of SVC.

In 1985 IBM introduced the PR/SM hypervisor to manage logical partitions (LPAR).

Operating system support

Several factors led to a resurgence around 2005 in the use of virtualization technology among Unix, Linux,
and other Unix-like operating systems:[11]

Expanding hardware capabilities, allowing each single machine to do more simultaneous work
Efforts to control costs and to simplify management through consolidation of servers
The need to control large multiprocessor and cluster installations, for example in server farms
and render farms
The improved security, reliability, and device independence possible from hypervisor
architectures
The ability to run complex, OS-dependent applications in different hardware or OS
environments

Major Unix vendors, including HP, IBM, SGI and Sun Microsystems, have been selling virtualized
hardware since before 2000. These have generally been large, expensive systems (in the multimillion-dollar
range at the high end), although virtualization has also been available on some low- and mid-range systems,
such as IBM's pSeries servers, HP Superdome series machines and Sun/Oracle's T-series CoolThreads
servers.

Although Solaris has always been the only guest domain OS officially supported by Sun/Oracle on their
Logical Domains hypervisor, as of late 2006, Linux (Ubuntu and Gentoo), and FreeBSD have been ported to
run on top of the hypervisor (and can all run simultaneously on the same processor, as fully virtualized
independent guest OSes). Wind River "Carrier Grade Linux" also runs on Sun's Hypervisor.[12] Full
virtualization on SPARC processors proved straightforward: since its inception in the mid-1980s Sun
deliberately kept the SPARC architecture clean of artifacts that would have impeded virtualization.
(Compare with virtualization on x86 processors below.)[13]

HPE provides HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) to host multiple operating systems on their
Itanium powered Integrity systems. Itanium can run HP-UX, Linux, Windows and OpenVMS, and these
environments are also supported as virtual servers on HP's Integrity VM platform. The HP-UX operating
system hosts the Integrity VM hypervisor layer that allows for many important features of HP-UX to be
taken advantage of and provides major differentiation between this platform and other commodity platforms
- such as processor hotswap, memory hotswap, and dynamic kernel updates without system reboot. While it
heavily leverages HP-UX, the Integrity VM hypervisor is really a hybrid that runs on bare-metal while
guests are executing. Running normal HP-UX applications on an Integrity VM host is heavily discouraged,
because Integrity VM implements its own memory management, scheduling and I/O policies that are tuned
for virtual machines and are not as effective for normal applications. HPE also provides more rigid
partitioning of their Integrity and HP9000 systems by way of VPAR and nPar technology, the former
offering shared resource partitioning and the latter offering complete I/O and processing isolation. The
flexibility of virtual server environment (VSE) has given way to its use more frequently in newer
deployments.

IBM provides virtualization partition technology known as logical partitioning (LPAR) on System/390,
zSeries, pSeries and iSeries systems. For IBM's Power Systems, the POWER Hypervisor (PHYP) is a native
(bare-metal) hypervisor in firmware and provides isolation between LPARs. Processor capacity is provided
to LPARs in either a dedicated fashion or on an entitlement basis where unused capacity is harvested and
can be re-allocated to busy workloads. Groups of LPARs can have their processor capacity managed as if
they were in a "pool" - IBM refers to this capability as Multiple Shared-Processor Pools (MSPPs) and
implements it in servers with the POWER6 processor. LPAR and MSPP capacity allocations can be
dynamically changed. Memory is allocated to each LPAR (at LPAR initiation or dynamically) and is
address-controlled by the POWER Hypervisor. For real-mode addressing by operating systems (AIX, Linux,
IBM i), the POWER processors (POWER4 onwards) have designed virtualization capabilities where a
hardware address-offset is evaluated with the OS address-offset to arrive at the physical memory address.
Input/Output (I/O) adapters can be exclusively "owned" by LPARs or shared by LPARs through an
appliance partition known as the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). The Power Hypervisor provides for high levels
of reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) by facilitating hot add/replace of many parts (model
dependent: processors, memory, I/O adapters, blowers, power units, disks, system controllers, etc.)

Similar trends have occurred with x86/x86-64 server platforms, where open-source projects such as Xen
have led virtualization efforts. These include hypervisors built on Linux and Solaris kernels as well as
custom kernels. Since these technologies span from large systems down to desktops, they are described in
the next section.

x86 systems
Starting in 2005, CPU vendors have added hardware virtualization assistance to their products, for example:
Intel VT-x (code-named Vanderpool) and AMD-V (code-named Pacifica).

An alternative approach requires modifying the guest operating-system to make system calls to the
hypervisor, rather than executing machine I/O instructions that the hypervisor simulates. This is called
paravirtualization in Xen, a "hypercall" in Parallels Workstation, and a "DIAGNOSE code" in IBM's VM.
All are really the same thing, a system call to the underlying hypervisor. Some microkernels such as Mach
and L4 are flexible enough such that "paravirtualization" of guest operating systems is possible.

Embedded systems
Embedded hypervisors, targeting embedded systems and certain real-time operating system (RTOS)
environments, are designed with different requirements when compared to desktop and enterprise systems,
including robustness, security and real-time capabilities. The resource-constrained nature of many
embedded systems, especially battery-powered mobile systems, imposes a further requirement for small
memory-size and low overhead. Finally, in contrast to the ubiquity of the x86 architecture in the PC world,
the embedded world uses a wider variety of architectures and less standardized environments. Support for
virtualization requires memory protection (in the form of a memory management unit or at least a memory
protection unit) and a distinction between user mode and privileged mode, which rules out most
microcontrollers. This still leaves x86, MIPS, ARM and PowerPC as widely deployed architectures on
medium- to high-end embedded systems.[14]

As manufacturers of embedded systems usually have the source code to their operating systems, they have
less need for full virtualization in this space. Instead, the performance advantages of paravirtualization make
this usually the virtualization technology of choice. Nevertheless, ARM and MIPS have recently added full
virtualization support as an IP option and has included it in their latest high-end processors and architecture
versions, such as ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore and ARMv8 EL2.

Other differences between virtualization in server/desktop and embedded environments include

requirements for efficient sharing of resources across virtual machines, high-bandwidth, low-latency inter-
VM communication, a global view of scheduling and power management, and fine-grained control of
information flows.[15]

Security implications
The use of hypervisor technology by malware and rootkits installing themselves as a hypervisor below the
operating system, known as hyperjacking, can make them more difficult to detect because the malware
could intercept any operations of the operating system (such as someone entering a password) without the
anti-malware software necessarily detecting it (since the malware runs below the entire operating system).
Implementation of the concept has allegedly occurred in the SubVirt laboratory rootkit (developed jointly by
Microsoft and University of Michigan researchers[16]) as well as in the Blue Pill malware package.
However, such assertions have been disputed by others who claim that it would be possible to detect the
presence of a hypervisor-based rootkit.[17]

In 2009, researchers from Microsoft and North Carolina State University demonstrated a hypervisor-layer
anti-rootkit called Hooksafe that can provide generic protection against kernel-mode rootkits.[18]

Notes
a. super- is from Latin, meaning "above", while hyper- is from the cognate term in Ancient Greek
(ὑπέρ), also meaning above or over.

References
1. Bernard Golden (2011). Virtualization For Dummies. p. 54 (https://books.google.com/books?id
=2ppZkdmpSlgC&pg=PA54).
2. "How did the term "hypervisor" come into use?" (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/quest
ions/196405/how-did-the-term-hypervisor-come-into-use).
3. Popek, Gerald J.; Goldberg, Robert P. (1974). "Formal requirements for virtualizable third
generation architectures". Communications of the ACM. 17 (7): 412–421.
doi:10.1145/361011.361073 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F361011.361073).
4. Meier, Shannon (2008). "IBM Systems Virtualization: Servers, Storage, and Software" (http://w
ww.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp4396.pdf) (PDF). pp. 2, 15, 20. Retrieved
December 22, 2015.
5. "antsleOS Architecture - antsle Docs" (http://docs.antsle.com/arch/). docs.antsle.com.
Retrieved June 28, 2018.
6. https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER6/iphb2/iphb2hypervisor.htm
 7. Dexter, Michael. "Hands-on bhyve" (http://callfortesting.org/bhyve/). CallForTesting.org.
Retrieved September 24, 2013.
8. Graziano, Charles (2011). "A performance analysis of Xen and KVM hypervisors for hosting
the Xen Worlds Project" (http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=3243&context=etd). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. Iowa State University.
Retrieved January 29, 2013.
9. Pariseau, Beth (April 15, 2011). "KVM reignites Type 1 vs. Type 2 hypervisor debate" (http://se
archservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/2240034817/KVM-reignites-Type-1-vs-Type-2-hy
pervisor-debate). SearchServerVirtualization. TechTarget. Retrieved January 29, 2013.
10. See History of CP/CMS for virtual-hardware simulation in the development of the System/370
11. Loftus, Jack (December 19, 2005). "Xen virtualization quickly becoming open source 'killer
app' " (http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/1153127/Xen-virtualization-quickly-becomi
ng-open-source-killer-app). TechTarget. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
12. "Wind River To Support Sun's Breakthrough UltraSPARC T1 Multithreaded Next-Generation
Processor" (http://www.windriver.com/news/press/pr.html?ID=3881). Wind River Newsroom
(Press release). Alameda, California. November 1, 2006. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
13. Fritsch, Lothar; Husseiki, Rani; Alkassar, Ammar. Complementary and Alternative
Technologies to Trusted Computing (TC-Erg./-A.), Part 1, A study on behalf of the German
Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) (https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/
EN/BSI/Publications/Studies/TC_ErgA/TC-ErgA_Part1.pdf?__blob=publicationFile) (PDF)
(Report).
14. Strobl, Marius (2013). Virtualization for Reliable Embedded Systems (http://www.grin.com/e-bo
ok/233001/). Munich: GRIN Publishing GmbH. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-3-656-49071-5. Retrieved
March 7, 2015.
15. Gernot Heiser (April 2008). "The role of virtualization in embedded systems" (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20120321212358/https://ertos.nicta.com.au/publications/papers/Heiser_08.abstract)
. Proc. 1st Workshop on Isolation and Integration in Embedded Systems (IIES'08). pp. 11–16.
Archived from the original (http://ertos.nicta.com.au/publications/papers/Heiser_08.abstract) on
March 21, 2012. Retrieved April 8, 2009.
16. "SubVirt: Implementing malware with virtual machines" (http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~pmchen/p
apers/king06.pdf) (PDF). University of Michigan, Microsoft. April 3, 2006. Retrieved
September 15, 2008.
17. "Debunking Blue Pill myth" (http://www.virtualization.info/2006/08/debunking-blue-pill-myth.htm
l). Virtualization.info. August 11, 2006. Retrieved December 10, 2010.
18. Wang, Zhi; Jiang, Xuxian; Cui, Weidong; Ning, Peng (August 11, 2009). Countering Kernel
Rootkits with Lightweight Hook Protection (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/wdc
ui/papers/hooksafe-ccs09.pdf) (PDF). Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Computer
and Communications Security. CCS '09. Chicago, Illinois, USA: ACM.
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.147.9928 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.147.99
28). doi:10.1145/1653662.1653728 (https://doi.org/10.1145%2F1653662.1653728). ISBN 978-
1-60558-894-0. Retrieved November 11, 2009.

External links
Hypervisors and Virtual Machines: Implementation Insights on the x86 Architecture (https://ww
w.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/105498-Revelle.pdf)
A Performance Comparison of Hypervisors (https://web.archive.org/web/20180219081010/htt
p://www.cc.iitd.ernet.in/misc/cloud/hypervisor_performance.pdf), VMware

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hypervisor&oldid=958809392"

This page was last edited on 25 May 2020, at 20:30 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.