Virtualization

• Introduction
• Virtualization and Cloud Computing
• Pros and Cons of Virtualization
• Technology Examples
• Virtualization technology is one of the
fundamental components of cloud computing,
especially in case of infrastructure based
services.
• It allows creation of secure, customizable and
isolated execution environment for running
applications, even if they are untrusted,
without affecting other users applications.
• At the base of this technology , there is the
ability of a computer program- or more in
general a combination of software and
hardware- to emulate an executing
environment separate from the one that host
such program.
• E.g: running windows OS on top of virtual
machine, which itself is running on Linux OS.
• Virtualization provides s great opportunity to
build elastically scalable systems, which are
capable of provisioning additional capability
with minimum costs.
• Moreover , virtualization technologies not
only provide a virtual environment for
executing applications, but also for storage,
memory, and networking.
• Virtualization is the creation of a virtual (rather
than actual) version of something, such as a
server, a desktop, a storage device, an operating
system or network resources.
• Virtualization is a technique, which allows to
share a single physical instance of a resource or an
application among multiple customers and
organizations.
• It does by assigning a logical name to a physical
storage and providing a pointer to that physical
resource when demanded.
• Virtualization is a technique how to separate a service
from the underlying physical delivery of that service.
• It is the process of creating a virtual version of
something .
• It involves using specialized software to create a
virtual or software-created version of a computing
resource.
• With the help of Virtualization multiple operating
systems and applications can run on same Machine
and its same hardware at the same time increasing the
utilization and flexibility of hardware.
• One of the main cost effective, hardware
reducing, energy saving techniques used by cloud
providers is virtualization.
• Virtualization is a technique, which allows to
share a single physical instance of a resource or an
application among multiple customers and
organizations at one time.
• virtualization technologies provide a virtual
environment for not only executing applications
but also for storage, memory, and networking.
 Situations that lead to virtualization
• Virtualization technology have gained renewed
interest recently due to the following phenomena:
1. Increased performance and computing capacity.
Now a days, the average end user desktop PC
is powerful enough to fulfil almost all the needs of
everyday computing, and there is an extra capacity
that is rarely used. Almost all these PCs have
resources enough to host a virtual machine manager
(VMM)and execute a virtual machine with a by far
acceptable performance.
 And also super computers can provide an immense compute power that
can accommodate the execution of hundreds or thousands of virtual
machines.
2. Underutilized hardware and software resources.
Hardware and software underutilization is occurring due to (a). The
increased performance and computing capacity and (b). Effect of limited
or sporadic use of resources.
computers today are so powerful that in most cases only a fraction of
their capacity is used by an application or the system.
e.g: desktop PCs mostly required by administrative staff for office
automation tasks are only used during work hours , while overnight they
remain completely unused. Using these resources for other purposes after
work hours could improve the efficiency of the IT infrastructure. In order
to provide such a service , it would be necessary to deploy a completely
separate environment, which can be achieved through virtualization.
3. Lack of space.
The continuous need for additional capacity , whether
this is storage or compute power, makes data centers grow
quickly.
Companies like Google and microsoft expand their
infrastructure by building data centers, as large as football
fields, that are able to host thousands of nodes. Although
this is viable for IT giants , in most cases enterprises cannot
afford building another data center to accommodate
additional resource capacity. This condition along with
hardware under utilization led to the diffusion of a
technology called server consolidation.
4. Green initiative.
Recently , companies are increasingly looking for
ways to reduce the amount of energy they consume
and reduce their carbon footprint. Data centers are
one of the major power consumers. Maintaining a
data cente operational does not only involve keeping
servers on, but a lot of energy is consumed for keeping
them cool. Hence reducing the number of servers
through server consolidation will definitely reduce the
impact of cooling and power consumption of a data
center. Virtualization technology can provide an
efficient way of consolidating servers.
5. Rise of administrative costs.
Power consumption and cooling costs have now become higher
than the cost of the IT equipment. Moreover the increased
demand for additional capacity which translates into more servers
in data center, is also responsible for a significant increment in the
administrative costs. Computers, in particular servers , do not
operate all on their own, but they require care and feeding from
system administrators. Their tasks include : hardware monitoring ,
defective hardware replacement, server setup and updates, server
resources monitoring, and backups. These are labour intensive
operations. Higher the number of servers higher the
administrative costs. Virtualization help in reducing the number of
required servers for a given workload, thus reducing the cost of
the administrative personnel.
 Characteristics of virtualized
environments
• Virtualization is a broad concept and it refers to the
creation of a virtual version of something, whether this is
hardware, software environment , storage, or network.
• In a virtualized environment , there are three major
components: gust, host and virtualization layer.
1. Guest: represents the system component that interact
with the virtualization layer .
2. Host: represents the original environment where the
guest is supposed to be managed.
3. Virtualization layer : is responsible for recreating the
same or a different environment where the guest will
operate.
 The advantages that are characterized by
virtualized solutions are
1. Increased security
2. Managed execution
2.1.sharing
2.2.Aggreation
2.3.Emulation
2.4.isolation
3. Portability
1. Increased security

The ability to control the execution of a gust in a completely

transparent manner opens new possibilities for delivering a
secure, controlled execution environment.
Resources exposed by the host can then be hidden or simply
protected from the guest. Moreover , sensitive information that
is contained in the host can be naturally hidden without the
need of installing complex security policies. Increased security is
a requirement when dealing with untrusted code.
E.g: applets downloaded from the internet run in a sandboxed
version of the ‘java virtual machine (JVM)’ , which provides them
with limited access to the hosting operating system resources.
Both the JVM and .NET runtime provide extensive security
policies for customizing the execution environment of
applications.
Hardware virtualization solutions such as
‘Vmware Desktop’, ‘VirtualBox’ and ‘Parallels’
provide the ability to create a virtual computer
with customized virtual hardware on top of
which a new OS can be installed.
By default the file system exposed by the
virtual computer is completely separate from the
one of the host machine. This becomes the
perfect environment for running applications
without affecting other users in the
environment.
 2. Managed execution.
Virtualization of the execution environment allow increased
security and provide a wide range of features :
i. Sharing : virtualization allows the creation of a separate
computing environment within the same host. In this way
, it is possible to fully exploit the capabilities of a powerful
host , which would be otherwise underutilized.
ii. Aggregation: A group of separate hosts can be tied
together and represented to gusts as a single virtual host.
This function is naturally implemented in middleware for
distributed computing .
iii. Emulation : A complete different environment with respect to the host can
be emulated, allowing the execution of guests requiring specific
characteristics that are not present in the physical host.

This feature becomes very useful for testing purpose where a specific
guest has to be validated against different platforms and the wide range
of options is not easily accessible during the development.
Again hardware virtualization solutions are able to provide virtual
hardware and emulate a particular kind of device such as Small
Computer System Interface (SCSI)devices for file IO, without the hosting
machine having such hardware installed.
old and legacy software, which does not meet the requirements of current
systems, can be run on emulated hardware without any need of
changing their code.
An example of emulation is represented by arcade game emulators
allowing playing arcade games on a normal personal computer.
iv. Isolation : virtualization allows providing guests- whether they
are OS, applications or other entities- with a complete
environment , in which they are executed.
The guest performs its activity by interacting with an abstraction
layer , which provides access to the underlying resources.
Isolation allows multiple guests to run on the same host
without each of them interfering with the other and it provide a
separation between the host and the guest.
isolation allows virtual machine managers such as Xen
Hypervisor to stop the execution of a gust OS , to move its
virtual image into another machine, and to resume its execution
in a completely transparent manner. This technique is called
virtual machine migration.
3. Portability .
Portability applies in different ways in different type
of virtualization.
In the case of hardware virtualization the guest is
packaged into a virtual image that can be safely
moved and executed on top of different virtual
machines.
In case of programming level virtualization the binary
code representing application components can be run
without any recompilation on any implementation of
the corresponding virtual machine.
Portability allows having our own system always with
us and ready to use.
Functions enabled by managed
execution
 Types of virtualization
1. Hardware level virtualization (system virtualization)
1.1. Hypervisors
1.2. Hardware virtualization techniques
1.2.1. Hardware assisted virtualization
1.2.2. full virtualization
1.2.3. para virtualization
1.2.4. partial virtualization
2. Operating system level virtualization
3. Programming language level virtualization
4. Application level virtualization
5. Storage virtualization
6. Network virtualization
7. Desktop virtualization
8. Application server virtualization
• 1. Hardware level virtualization (system virtualization)
Hardware –level virtualization is a virtualization
technique that provides an abstract execution
environment in terms of computer hardware , on top
of which a guest O.S can be run.
The guest is represented by the O.S, the host by the
physical computer hardware, the
virtual machine manager by the hypervisor.
The hypervisor is generally a program ,or a
combination of software and hardware , that allows
the abstraction of the underlying physical hardware.
1.1. Hypervisors (virtual machine manager)
A fundamental element of hardware
virtualization.
It recreates a hardware environment, where gust
OS are installed.
Two types
1. type 1 (hosted)- hypervisors run directly on top
of the hardware.
2. type 2 (native)- require the support of an OS to
provide virtualization.
• Type I
- Run directly on top of the hardware
- They take the place of the O.S
- Interact directly with the ISA (instruction set
architecture, is the interface between
hardware and software) .
- Also called native virtual machine – since it
runs natively on hardware.
• Type II
- Require the support of an O.S to provide
virtualization services.
- They are programs managed by the O.S ,
which interact with it through the ABI
(application binary interface) and emulate the
ISA of virtual hardware for guest O.S.
- Also called hosted virtual machine , since it is
hosted within an O.S
 • Three main modules coordinate their activity
in order to emulate the underlying hardware
1. Dispatcher
2. Allocator
3. Interpreter
Hypervisor reference architecture
(VMM internal organization)
• Dispatcher – constitutes the entry point of the
monitor and reroutes the instructions issued by
the virtual machine instance to one of the two
other modules.
• Allocator – is responsible for deciding the system
resources to be provided to the VM.
• Interpreter – consists of interpreter routines .
These are executed whenever a virtual machine
executes a privileged instruction : a trap is
triggered and the corresponding routine is
executed .
 • The criteria that need to be met by a VMM to
efficiently support virtualization (or the properties
that have to be satisfied ) is ..
1. Equivalence : a gust running under a VMM
should exhibit the same behaviour as when
executed directly on the physical host.
2. Resource control : The VMM should be in
complete control of virtualized resources.
3. Efficiency : A statistically dominant fraction of
the machine instructions should be executed
without intervention from the VMM.
1.2. Hardware virtualization techniques
1.2.1. Hardware-assisted virtualization : this
term refers to a scenario in which the
hardware provides architectural support for
building a VMM able to run a gust OS in
complete isolation.
1.2.2. Full virtualization
• Refers to the ability of running a program, most likely
an OS , on top of a VM directly and without any
modification, as if it were run on the raw hardware.
• In order to make this possible VMMs are required to
provide a complete emulation of the entire underlying
hardware.
• The advantages are complete isolation ,which leads to
enhanced security, ease of emulation of different
architectures, and coexistence of different systems on
the same platform.
1.2.3. Paravirtualization
• Expose a software interface to the virtual
machine that is slightly modified from the host
and , as a consequence, guests need to be
modified.
• The aim is to provide the capability to
demand the execution of performance critical
operation directly on the host.
1.2.4.Partial virtualization .
• Provides a partial emulation of the underlying
hardware, thus not allowing the complete
execution of the guest operating system in
complete isolation .
• Allows many applications to run transparently
but not all the features of the os can be
supported as happens with full virtualization.
2. Operating system level virtualization
• Offers the opportunity to create different and
separated execution environments for
applications that are managed concurrently.
• The difference from hardware virtualization is
there is no VMM or hypervisor, the virtualization
is done within a single OS.
• This is an evolution of chroot mechanism in Unix.
• Examples are FreeBSD jails, IBM Logical
Partition(LPAR), Free Virtual Private
Server(FreeVPS)
3. Programming language level virtualization
• It is mostly used to achieve ease of deployment of
application ,managed execution and portability
across different platform and OS.
• It consists of a virtual machine executing the byte
code of a program
• Example
java platform – java virtual machine (jvm)
.Net provides common language infrastructure
• They are stack based virtual machines.
4. Application level Virtualization.
• This technique allows applications to be run on runtime environments,
which do not natively support all the features required by such
applications.
• this is a good solution in the case of missing libraries in the host OS: in
this case a replacement library can be linked with the application , or
library calls can be remapped to existing functions available in the host
system.
• This technique allows incompatible applications to run together.
• Examples:
Wine: which is a software application allowing unix like os to execute
programs written for the microsoft windows platform
CrossOver : allows running Windows applications directly on the Mac OS
X.
Vmware ThinApp,
5. Storage Virtualization.
• Storage virtualization is an array of servers that
are managed by a virtual storage system.
• The servers aren’t aware of exactly where their
data is stored.
• storage virtualization software maintains smooth
operations, consistent performance and a
continuous suite of advanced functions despite
changes, break down and differences in the
underlying equipment.
6.Network Virtualization
The ability to run multiple virtual networks that
each has a separate control and data plan.
It co-exist together on top of one physical
network.
It can be managed by individual parties that
potentially confidential to each other.
Network virtualization, provides a facility to
create and provision virtual networks—logical
switches, routers, firewalls, load balancer, Virtual
Private Network (VPN), and workload security.
7.Desktop Virtualization
Desktop virtualization allows the users’ OS to be
remotely stored on a server in the data center.
It allows the user to access their desktop virtually,
from any location by different machine.
Main benefits of desktop virtualization is user
mobility, portability, easy management of
software installation, updates.
8. Application server virtualization
abstracts a collection of application servers
that provide the same services as a single
virtual application server by using load
balancing strategies and providing a high
availability infrastructure for the services
hosted in the application server.
Virtualization and cloud computing

Virtualization plays an important role in cloud computing , it

allows for the appropriate degree of customization ,
security, isolation, and manageability that are fundamental
for delivering IT services on demand.
Hardware and programming language virtualization are the
techniques adopted in cloud computing.
Hardware virtualization is an enabling factor for solutions in
IaaS.
Programming language virtualization leveraged in PaaS.
Virtualization simplify the leasing of services and their
accountability on the vendor side.
Server consolidation
it allows reducing the number of active
resources by aggregating virtual machines
over smaller number of resources that
become fully utilized.
It allows reducing the power consumption of
a data center and resolving hardware
underutilization.
 Live migration
Live Migration is the process of moving a
running virtual machine (VM) from one
physical server to another while not disrupting
the availability of the virtual machine to users.
It helps better resource utilization by load
balancing.
Live migration & server consolidation
 Pros and cons of virtualization
• Advantages:
1. Managed execution and isolation: these characteristics allow building
secure and controllable computing environments.
this enables fine tuning of resources , which is very important in server
consolidation scenario.
2. portability: virtual machine instances are normally represented by one or
more files that can be easily transported with respect to physical
systems. Java programs are “compiled once and run everywhere” –they
only require the java virtual machine to be installed on the host.
3. self-containment : contribute to reduce the costs for maintenance , since
the number of hosts is expected to be lower than the number of virtual
machine instances.
4. Efficient use of resources: multiple systems can securely coexist and share
the resources of the underlying host, without interfering with each
other. Thus save energy consumption and have less impact on the
environment.
 • Disadvantages:
1. Performance degradation: performance is definitely one of the
major concerns when using the virtualization technology. Since
virtualization interposes an abstraction layer between the gust
and the host, increased latencies and delays can be experienced
by the guest.
2. Inefficiency and degraded user experience: virtualization can
sometimes lead to an inefficient use of the host. Some of the
specific features of the host cannot be exposed by the
abstraction layer and they become inaccessible.
3. Security holes and new threats: virtualization opens the door to
a new and unexpected form of phishing. The capability of
emulating a host in a complete transparent manner, has led the
way to malicious programs which are designed to extract
sensitive information from the guest.
 Technology examples
1. Xen : para virtualization
is a type-1 hypervisor
Xen was developed by XenSource, which was
purchased by Citrix Systems in 2007.
It is an open source hypervisor.
Xen architecture
2.VMware: full virtualization.
3. Microsoft Hyper-V
Infrastructure virtualization solution
Developed by Microsoft
For server virtualization
Type 1 hypervisor