Server

Virtualization
.

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 Overview

1. Why Virtualize?
2. Server Virtualization Concepts
3. Virtualization Products
4. A Sample of Virtualization Products
5. Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
Note: Storage Virtualization and Network Virtualization will be
discussed in subsequent lectures

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 Virtualization
“Virtualization means that Applications can use a resource
without any concern for where it resides, what the technical
interface is, how it has been implemented, which platform it
uses, and how much of it is available.”

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 5 Reasons to Virtualize
1. Sharing: Break up a large resource
Large Capacity or high-speed 10Gb
E.g., Servers
2. Isolation: Protection from other tenants
E.g., Virtual Private Network
3. Aggregating: Combine many resources Switch Switch
in to one, e.g., storage
Switch Switch
4. Dynamics: Fast allocation,
Change/Mobility, load balancing, e.g.,
virtual machines
5. Ease of Management  Easy
distribution, deployment, testing
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Advantages of Virtualization
 Minimize hardware costs (CapEx)
Multiple virtual servers on one physical hardware
 Easily move VMs to other data centers
 Provide disaster recovery. Hardware maintenance.
 Follow the sun (active users) or follow the moon (cheap power)
 Consolidate idle workloads. Usage is bursty and asynchronous.
Increase device utilization
 Conserve power
Free up unused physical resources
 Easier automation (Lower OpEx)
Simplified provisioning/administration of hardware and software
 Scalability and Flexibility: Multiple operating systems

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Virtualization in Computing
 Storage:
 Virtual Memory  L1, L2, L3, ...  Recursive
 Virtual CDs, Virtual Disks (RAID), Cloud storage
 Computing:
 Virtual Desktop  Virtual Server  Virtual Datacenter
Thin Client  VMs  Cloud
 Networking: Plumbing of computing
 Virtual Channels, Virtual LANs,
Virtual Private Networks

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Server Virtualization Concepts
Guest OS1 … Guest OSn
Hypervisor Type 2 Guest OS1 … Guest OSn
Host OS Hypervisor Type 1
Hardware Hardware
 Host OS: Runs on the bare metal
 Guest OS: Runs on the host OS,
e.g., Windows XP Mode on Win 7
 Hypervisor: Software to support multiple virtual machines
 Type 1: Runs on bare metal, e.g., Xen, VMware ESXi

 Type 2: Runs on a host OS, e.g., MS Virtual PC

 Type 0: Both 1 and 2, e.g., Linux KVM

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 Levels of Virtualization
User Virtualization
Application Virtualization
Desktop
Service Virtualization
Operating System Virtualization
Server Virtualization
Storage Virtualization
Network Virtualization

 Network and Storage virtualization will be discussed in later

modules of this course.

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Operating System-Level Virtualization

Container Container Container

Operating System
 Multiple isolated user spaces on the same operating system
 Example: Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, …
 Multiple users can remotely login and use the system.
Only one operating system instance
 Guest operating system is similar or same as the host,
E.g., Windows on Windows
 Applications of one user cannot affect other users
aka Jails => Can be used to run suspect software
E.g., iCore Virtual Accounts and Sandboxie

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 Desktop Virtualization
 A Desktop system with multiple operating systems
 Example: Mac OS X and Windows at the same time
Parallels Desktop for Mac
 Hypervisor type 1 similar to server virtualization
 Useful for testing software on multiple OS
 Reduced hardware cost
 This is local desktop virtualization

… Guest OSn
Guest OS1
Hypervisor Type 1
Hardware

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 Thin Client
 Also called Remote Desktop Virtualization
or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
or Access Virtualization
 Remote server provides most of the computing and
storage resources
 All programs and data is stored on remote servers
 Local computer is simple with limited resources
 Easy maintenance and upgrades
 Users can log in on any client
 Significant energy savings
 Example: Chrome books
 Zero Client: Power cable only.
USB and communication via WiFi

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 Application Virtualization
 Allows an application to run on many different operating
systems and hardware
 Application byte code can run on different processors and
operating systems usually using an interpreter or just-in-time
(run-time) compilation
 Examples: Java Virtual Machine (JVM)

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 Service Virtualization
 Service is similar to but different from applications in that they
are hidden from the end user
Example services: Firewall, load balancer, Proxy Server
 Service virtualization: Virtual appliances implemented in
software
 A load balancer’s IP address is advertised outside.
It distributes the load to multiple servers.

Load
Balancer …

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User Experience Virtualization
 Aka User Virtualization
 Users see the same application interface
regardless of the device: laptop, tablet,
Smart Phone
 Users can roam from device to device
 User profiles and application settings are
stored in a central data center or cloud
 Example: Microsoft UE-V

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 Related Concepts
 Hardware Emulation
 Hardware Assisted Virtualization
 Parallel Virtual Machines
 Paravirtualization

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 Hardware Emulation
 Mimic a different type of hardware, e.g., SPARC on PC
 Examples:
 Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac: x86 on PowerPC

 Bochs (pronounced Box): emulates x86 on UNIX, Linux,

Windows, and Mac OS X
 QEMU: Emulates x86, x8664, ARM, SPARC, PowerPC,
MIPS, and m68k on x86, x8664, and PowerPC

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Hardware Assisted Virtualization
 Processors are designed to help virtualization
 For example, Intel-VT and AMD-V provide additional
instructions that help virtualization
 Hypervisors can use these instructions to improve the
performance
 Linux KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual PC, Xen,
etc. use these features

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 Parallel Virtual Machines
 One computing environment running on multiple computers
 PVM is also the name of an open source software that allows
running a program in parallel on multiple machines
 Now grid computing and cluster computing is generally used

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 Paravirtualization
 Hypervisor offers special APIs for operations that are difficult
to run in a virtual environment
 Requires modifying the guest OS.
Requires source code for the guest OS.
Change and recompile for the hypervisor
 Example: paravirt-ops code in Linux provides a hypervisor
agnostic interface between the hypervisor and guest kernels.

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 Virtualization Products
 Microsoft Virtual PC: Included with Windows
 Xen: Popular open source hypervisor from University of
Cambridge. Endorsed by many manufacturers. Allows running
multiple Linux-like operating systems at nearly native speeds.
Citrix provides Xen extensions and support.
 Oracle VM VirtualBox: runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
XP/Vista/7/8, Solaris, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD. Free.
 Microsoft Hyper-V: Part of Windows 2008+ Server
 Linux KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine): Uses Linux kernel as a
hypervisor. Each VM uses its own unique kernel. Uses
processor virtualization extensions (Intel-VT and AMD-V).
 User-Mode Linux (UML): Uses an executable kernel and a
root file system to create a VM.

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 VMware ESX/ESXi
 ESX: Bare metal embedded hypervisor for server virtualization
in an enterprise data center. Creates VM0 for a Linux based
service consol for management of hypervisor and other VMs
 vMotion feature in ESX allows a live VM to move to
another host. A copy of memory is sent to the new location
and updated until the transfer.
 ESXi: Smaller footprint version of ESX. No service console.
Free download. Many features require vCenter license.
 vCenter allows managing multiple servers and to run
vMotion and svMotion (Storage sync on the remote
location)

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 VMware vMotion
VM

 Live migration of running VMs from one datacenter to another

Live= <1 second interruption. Warm = few tens of seconds
 Allows VMs to move in/between datacenters
 VMware ESX servers
 VMs keep the same IP address
 Same IP subnet/broadcast domain
 Requires LAN extension and Storage Extension (access storage
from previous data center)
 Storage vMotion: Storage is moved before the VM
 Storage Caching can also be used
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VMware ThinApp, View, Fusion
 ThinApp: Portable application creator. Virtualizes resources
such as environment variables, files, and registry keys. Allows
programs to run from USB keys.
 View: Allows thin clients.
Multiple clients share a remote server.
A Linux or Mac OS X client can connect to remote server.
 Fusion: Hypervisor for Intel-based Macs
 Allows running Windows, Linux, Solaris, along with OS X

 Requires Intel-VT hardware virtualization support

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VMware Workstation and Player
 Workstation: Hypervisor for virtual computing.
 Virtualizes network adapters, disk drives, USB devices,
CD/DVD drives.
 Useful for testing client-server environments.

 Requires hardware virtualization support.

 Many ready-made VMs are available.

 Player: A freeware version of VMware workstation with

limited
 VMware High Availability (HA)
 Virtual Machine File System (VMFS): Cluster file system for
ESX cluster

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 VMware vSphere
vSphere is the VMware’s product suite consisting of:
 vCenter: Provisioning, management, and monitoring console
for the cloud
 ESX or ESXi: Type 1 hypervisor that runs on bare metal
 Virtual SMP: VM running on two or more physical processors
 Cluster = collection of servers that pool CPU/memory/storage
for VMs
 Pod = Collection of clusters grouped as a management unit
 Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS): System for
provisioning VMs and load balancing across multiple physical
servers
 vNetwork Distributed Switch (DVS): Maintains network
runtime state as VMs move
.
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 File System for VMs
Using VMware’s example:
 All physical disks are clustered in to Pools
 Each VM has a virtual disk in some pool with extension .vmdk
 The disk is formatted using Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)
 Thin Provisioning: Dynamic disk size. Occupies the minimum
space required and grows as the data grows
 Thick Provisioning: Static. Full size is allocated at creation
 Linked Clone: All VMs use the same disk (generally read-only),
e.g., operating system disk
 Non-Linked Disk: Separate disks for each VM (writeable)
 Persistent/Non-Persistent: Saved/Deleted on VM release.
Permanent/Temporary files

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Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
 Standalone software can be distributed as a virtual machine
image, called, virtual appliance
 Independent of hypervisor or processor architecture
 OVF is the standard format for virtual appliances
Standardized by DTMF (Distributed Management Task Force)
Now ISO/IEC standard.
 OVF package consists of several files in a directory.
An XML file with extension .ovf or a compliant format, e.g.,
.vmdk in the directory contains all the meta data required to run
the package, e.g., hardware requirements, descriptions, security
certificates, etc.
 VMware, Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix, IBM and many others
support OVF

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 OVF (Cont)
 OVF V1.1.0 supports single VM packages and packages
containing multiple VMs constituting a multitier service
 Other popular format are Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk
(VHD), and VMware’s Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK)

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 PCoIP Protocol
 VMware proprietary protocol for virtual desktops
 Content-Aware: Text and graphics are treated differently
Graphics is compressed
 Server Rendered: All pixels are rendered on the server
No codec in the client
 Delivery optimization based on real-time network conditions
 Layered rendering: Graphics becomes clearer slowly
 Can be used with/without a hardware PCoIP card
 Alternatives:
 Microsoft’s Remote Display Protocol (RDP)
 Virtual Network Computing (VNC)
 X Window System (X11)

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 Summary

1. Virtualization allows computation to be done anywhere

anytime on any infrastructure Easy and efficient resource
scheduling and management
2. Servers, storage, and network all need to be virtualized
3. Hypervisors of type 1 run on bare metal. Type 2 require a host
OS.
4. MS Virtual PC, Xen, VMware ESX, and Virtual Box are
examples of popular virtualization products.
5. OVF is the standard format for virtual images
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 Acronyms
ACE Application Control Engine (Cisco)
API Application Programming Interface
AVM Application Virtual Machines
CD Compact Disk
DOM Domain
DRS Distributed Resource Scheduler
DTMF Distributed Management Task Force
DVD Digital Video Disk
ESX VMware Product Name
FreeBSD Free Berkeley System Distribution
GSX VMware Product Name
IEC International Electro technical Commission
ISO International Standards Organization
JVM Java Virtual Machine
KVM Kernel Virtual Machine

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 Acronyms (Cont)
MS Microsoft
OS Operating System
OVF Open Virtualization Format
PC Personal Computer
SMP Symmetric Multiprocessing
SPARC Scalable Processor Architecture (Sun/Oracle)
svMotion Storage virtual motion
UML User-Mode Linux
USB Universal Serial Bus
VHD Virtual Hard Disk
VM Virtual Machine
VMFS Virtual Machine File System
vMotion Virtual Motion
XML eXtensible Markup Language

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