Technical Computer Science 6

Virtualization Systems and Technology

Lecture 1

Introduction to Virtualization Technology

Lecturer: Ab. Rahman Vakili

E-Mail: [email protected]
 Outline
Intro
Networking modes
Not attached
Network Address Translation (NAT)
Bridged networking
Internal networking
Host-only networking
Generic networking
Networking concept in Xen

2 Ah. Khalid Nasrat

Networking concept
 The VMM documentation indicates that “A logical network is used to

organize and simplify network assignments for hosts, virtual machines

and services.
 As part of logical network creation, you can create network sites to

define the VLANs, IP subnets, and IP subnet/VLAN pairs that are

associated with the logical network in each physical location.”
Networking modes
We can chose different networking modes in a
VM:

Not attached

Network Address Translation (NAT)

Bridged networking

Internal networking

Host-only networking
Not attached
In this mode, VirtualBox reports to the guest that a

network card is present, but that there is no

connection -- as if no Ethernet cable was plugged
into the card.
This way it is possible to "pull" the virtual Ethernet

cable and disrupt the connection, which can be

useful to inform a guest operating system that no
network connection is available and enforce a
reconfiguration.
 Network Address Translation
(NAT)
It does not require any configuration on the host
network and guest system.
For this reason, it is the default networking mode
in VirtualBox.
VirtualBox networking engine acts as a router
and placed between each virtual machine and
the host
This separation maximizes security since by
default virtual machines cannot talk to each other.
You cannot run a server this way unless you set
up port forwarding

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Bridged networking
This is for more advanced networking needs
such as network simulations and running
servers in a guest.
When enabled, VirtualBox connects to one of
your installed network cards and exchanges
network packets directly, circumventing your
host operating system's network stack.
Bridging to a wireless interface is done
differently because most wireless adapters do
not support promiscuous mode.
 All traffic has to use the MAC address of the host's
wireless adapter, and therefore VirtualBox needs
to replace the source MAC address in the Ethernet
header of an outgoing packet to make sure the
reply will be sent to the host interface.
Internal networking
This can be used to create a different kind of
software-based network which is visible to
selected virtual machines, but not to
applications running on the host or to the
outside world.
Host-only networking
This can be used to create a network containing
the host and a set of virtual machines, without
the need for the host's physical network
interface.
Instead, a virtual network interface (similar to a
loopback interface) is created on the host,
providing connectivity among virtual machines
and the host.
 Generic networking
Rarely used modes share the same generic
network interface, by allowing the user to select
a driver which can be included with VirtualBox
or be distributed in an extension pack.
At the moment there are potentially two
available sub-modes:
UDP Tunnel: This can be used to interconnect
virtual machines running on different hosts
directly, easily and transparently, over existing
network infrastructure.
VDE (Virtual Distributed Ethernet)
networking: This option can be used to connect
to a Virtual Distributed Ethernet switch on a Linux
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or a FreeBSD host. At the moment this needs
compiling VirtualBox from sources, as the Oracle
Xen Domain
Xen runs guests in environments known as
domains which encapsulate a complete running
virtual environment
There are two types of Domains:
DomU:
the “U” stands for unprivileged.
Guest OSs run in this domain.
Dom0:
has elevated privileges
Provides device drivers
Provides tools/mechanisms to configure
Virtualization environment
 Xen Networking
A Xen guest typically has access to one or more
paravirtualised (PV) network interfaces
A paravirtualised network device consists of a
pair of network devices.
The first of these (the frontend) will reside in the
guest domain while the second (the backend) will
reside in the backend domain (typically Dom0).
A similar pair of devices is created for each virtual
network interface
The frontend devices appear much like any
other physical Ethernet NIC in the guest domain.
creates a device ethN e.g eth0
The backend device is typically named such that
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it contains both the guest domain ID and the
Xen Networking concept
Network flow in Xen
 Linux Bridge
Xen Server
Many hypervisor (Vlan 2) (Vlan 30) (Vlan 30)

based virtualization VM1 VM2 VM3 VM4

apply Linux Bridge

eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1 eth0 eth1

domU

model, such as KVM, vif1.0 vif1.1 vif2.0 vif2.1 vif3.0 vif3.1 vif4.0 vif4.1
dom0

libvirt. (Vlan 1) (Vlan 2) (Vlan 30)

All of bridging work xenbr0 xenbr1 xapi1 xapi2 xapi30 xenbr2 Xenbr3

are done by ‘brctl’.

(insert vlan tag)
eth1.1 eth1.2 eth1.30
(untagged (tagged traffic)
traffic)

Provide simple L2 eth0 eth1 eth2 eth3

switching functions.
DataNetwork (vlan) Internet VmMgmt
XenMgmt
The default (and (172.v.v.h/16) (192.168.0.0/16) (10.5.0.0/16)

most common) Xen Switch

(trunk port)

configuration uses
bridging within the
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 VMware Infrastructure 3

VMware Infrastructure provides a rich set of networking capabilities that

integrate well with sophisticated enterprise networks
Network between Host and guest Operating systems
Question?