Implementation Levels of

Virtualization

• Reference: Distributed and Cloud Computing

K. Hwang, G. Fox and J. Dongarra
 Overview
• Implementation Levels of Virtualization
– ISA Level
– Hardware Level
– OS- Level
– Library Level
– Application Level
• VMM Design Requirements
 Virtualization and VM
• Virtualization is a technology by which multiple
Virtual Machines are multiplexed in the same hardware
machine each VM running their own OS.
• With Virtualization, any computer platform can be
installed in another host computer, even if they use
processor with different ISA and distinct OS.
• Purpose of VM is to enhance the following
– Resource Sharing by many users
– Improved Computer Performance (Resource
Utilization and application Flexibility)
Difference between Traditional Computer
and Virtual machines

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 Virtual Machine, Guest Operating System,
and VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor)
Virtual Machine
A representation of a real machine using software that
provides an environment to host guest OS
Guest Operating System
An operating system running in a virtual machine.

The Virtualization layer is the middleware between the underlying

hardware and virtual machines represented in the system, also
known as virtual machine monitor (VMM) or hypervisor.

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Virtualization Ranging from Hardware to Applications in
Five Abstraction Levels
Virtualization at ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) level
• Emulating a given ISA by the ISA of the host machine.
• e.g, MIPS binary code can run on an x-86-based host machine with
the help of ISA emulation.
• Dynamic Binary Translation : Translates basic blocks of
source instruction to target instruction.
• Typical systems: Bochs, Crusoe, Quemu, BIRD, Dynamo
• Advantage:
• It can run a large amount of legacy binary codes written for
various processors on any given new hardware host machines
• Best application flexibility
• Shortcoming & limitation:
• One source instruction may require tens or hundreds of native
target instructions to perform its function, which is relatively
slow.
• V-ISA requires adding a processor-specific software translation
layer in the complier.
 Virtualization at Hardware Abstraction level
• Virtualization is performed right on top of the hardware.
• It generates virtual hardware environments for VMs (CPU,
Memory, I/O devices)
• Manages the underlying hardware through virtualization.
• Typical systems: VMware, Virtual PC, Denali, Xen
• Xen hypervisor is applied to virtualize x-86 based machines to
run Linux or other guest OS.
• Advantage:
– Has higher performance and good application isolation
• Shortcoming & limitation:
– Very expensive to implement (complexity)
 Virtualization at Operating System (OS) level

• It is an abstraction layer between traditional OS and user

applications.
• This virtualization creates isolated containers or Virtual
Execution Environment or Virtual Private System
( VPS) on a single physical server and the OS-instance
to utilize the hardware and software in datacenters.
• Typical systems: Jail / Virtual Environment / Ensim's
VPS / FVM
Virtualization at OS Level

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Virtualization for Linux and Windows NT
Platforms

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 Virtualization for Linux and Windows
NT Platforms
• So far, most reported OS- Level Virtualizations are
Linux based.
• Virtualization for Windows-based platform is still in
research stage.
• Linux Kernel offers an abstraction layer, to allow
software process to work with and operate on
resources without knowing the hardware details.
Virtualization for Linux and Windows
NT Platforms

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 Virtualization at OS Level
•Advantages of OS Extension for Virtualization
1. VMs at OS level has minimum startup/shutdown
costs, low resource requirement and high scalability
2. OS-level VM can easily synchronize with its
environment

•Disadvantage of OS Extension for Virtualization

1. All VMs in the same OS container must have the same
or similar guest OS, which restrict application
flexibility & isolation of different VMs on the same
physical machine.
 Library Support level
• It creates execution environments for running alien
programs on a platform rather than creating VM to run
the entire operating system.
• Also known as user-level Application Binary Interface
(ABI)
• It is done by API call interception and remapping.
• Typical systems: Wine, WABI, LxRun , VisualMainWin
and vCUDA
• Advantage:
– It has very low implementation effort
• Shortcoming & limitation:
– Poor application flexibility and isolation
Virtualization with Middleware/Library Support

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The vCUDA for Virtualization of GPGPU

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 The vCUDA for Virtualization of GPGPU
• CUDA is programming model and library for GP- GPUs
• It provides GPUs to run compute intensive applications on host OS.
• It is difficult to run CUDA application on Hardware-level VMs
directly.
• vCUDA virtualizes CUDA library.
• When CUDA applications run on guest OS and issues call to CUDA
API, vCUDA intercepts and directs to CUDA API running on host
OS.
• vCUDA employs client server model to implement CUDA
virtualization.
• vGPU returns local virtual address to application and notify remote
stub to allocate real device memory and execution context for APIs
calls from guest OS.
 User-Application level
• It virtualizes an application as a virtual machine.
• High Level Language VMs: This layer sits as an application
program on top of an operating system and exports an
abstraction of a VM that can run programs written and
compiled to a particular abstract machine definition.
• Application-level or Process-Level Virtualization
• Typical systems: JVM , .NET CLI , Panot
• Advantage:
– Best application isolation
• Shortcoming & limitation:
– Low performance, low application flexibility and high implementation
complexity.
 Summary

More Xs mean higher merit

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 VMM Design Requirements
• First, a VMM should provide an environment for programs
which is essentially identical to the original machine.
• Second, programs run in this environment should show, at
worst, only minor decreases in speed.
• Third, a VMM should be in complete control of the system
resources
– The VMM is responsible for allocating hardware resources
for programs.
– It is not possible for a program to access any resource not
explicitly allocated to it.
– It is possible under certain circumstances for a VMM to
regain control of resources already allocated.

Not all processors satisfy these requirements for a VMM. A VMM is tightly
related to the architectures of processors. It is difficult to implement a VMM
for some types of processors, such as the x86.
 Summary
• Implementation Levels of Virtualization
– ISA Level
– Hardware Level
– OS- Level
– Library Level
– Application Level
• VMM Design Requirements