Operating Systems

Chapter 6 Virtual Machines

Tien Pham Van, Dr. rer. nat.

Compiled with reference to other presentations

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 Outlines

• Introduction
• Virtualization using hardware
• Software-based virtual machine
• Virtualization in clouds

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 Early Computers

• Hardware designed
– Software written for hardware
• Each system crafted with own instruction set
– Software had to made specifically for each instruction set
• Eventually instruction sets became more
standardized
– However, software still requires a certain instruction set
architecture and operating system that meets strict
standards.

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 Initial Hardware Model
• All applications access hardware resources (i.e.
memory, i/o) through system calls to operating
system (priviledge instructions)
• Advantages
– Design is decoupled (i.e. OS people can develop OS
separate of Hardware people developing hardware)
– Hardware and software can be upgraded without
notifying the Application programs
• Disadvantage
– Application compiled on one ISA will not run on
another ISA..
• Applications compiled for Mac use different
operating system calls then application designed for
windows.
– ISA’s must support old software
• Can often be inhibiting in terms of performance
– Since software is developed separately from
hardware.. Software is not necessarily
optimized for hardware.
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 Intro

• Virtual machines are “an efficient, isolated

duplicate of a real machine”
-Popek and Goldberg
Popek and Goldberg introduced conditions for computer architecture to efficiently support system
virtualization.

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 Solution – Virtual Machine

• A virtual machine provides interface

identical to underlying bare hardware
– I.e., all devices, interrupts, memory, page
tables, etc.

• Virtual Machine Operating System

creates illusion of multiple processors
– Each capable of executing independently
– No sharing, except via network protocols

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 Virtual Machines

• The resources of the physical computer are

shared to create the virtual machines
– CPU scheduling can create the appearance that
each user has own processor
– Spooling and a file system provide
• virtual card readers, virtual line printers
– Disk partitioned to provide virtual disks
– A normal user time-sharing terminal serves as
the virtual machine operator’s console

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 Definitions

• Host Operating System:

– The operating system actually running on the
hardware
– Together with virtualization layer, it simulates
environment for …
• Guest Operating System:
– The operating system running in the simulated
environment
– E.g., the one we are trying to debug

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 Virtual Machines

• Virtual-machine concept provides complete protection of

system resources
– Each virtual machine is isolated from all other virtual machines.
– However, no direct sharing of resources
• Virtual-machine system is a good vehicle for operating-
systems research and development.
– System development is done on the virtual machine does not disrupt
normal operation
– Multiple concurrent developers can work at same time

• The virtual machine concept is difficult to implement due to

the effort required to provide an exact duplicate to the
simulated machine

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 Overview

• What is Virtualization? – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8A9PHeyRrY

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 Kinds of VM

• System virtual machines (also termed full

virtualization VMs) provide a substitute for a
real machine. They provide functionality
needed to execute entire operating systems
– Example: VMWare, QEMU, VirtualBox
• Process virtual machines are designed to
execute computer programs in a platform-
independent environment
– Example: Java Virtual Machine

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 Full Virtualization

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 Hardware virtualization
• Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of
computers as complete hardware platforms,
certain logical abstractions of their
componentry, or only the functionality
required to run various operating systems
• At its origins, the software that controlled
virtualization was called a "control program",
but the terms "hypervisor" or "virtual
machine monitor" became preferred over
time

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 Hardware virtualization
• Virtualization: VM and Hypervisor – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISwgVUPH1cs

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 Hardware-assisted virtualization

• The hardware provides architectural support

that facilitates building a virtual machine
monitor and allows guest OSs to be run in
isolation
• In 2005 and 2006, Intel and AMD provided
additional hardware to support virtualization.
Sun Microsystems (now Oracle Corporation)
added similar features in their UltraSPARC T-
Series processors in 2005

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 Paravirtualization

• The virtual machine does not necessarily

simulate hardware, but offers a special API
that can only be used by modifying the
"guest" OS.
• It replaces sensitive instructions with calls to
VMM APIs (e.g.: "cli" with
"vm_handle_cli()"), then re-compiles the OS
and use the new binaries

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 Operating System-level virtualization

• A physical server is virtualized at the

operating system level, enabling multiple
isolated and secure virtualized servers to run
on a single physical server.
• The "guest" OS environments share the same
running instance of the operating system as
the host system. Thus, the same operating
system kernel is also used to implement the
"guest" environments, and applications
running in a given "guest" environment view
it as a stand-alone system.
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 Conventional OS and VM OSs

Non-virtual Machine Virtual Machine

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 VMware – Modern Virtual Machine System

• Founded 1998, Mendel Rosenblum et al.

• Research at Stanford University
• VMware Workstation
• Separates Host OS from virtualization layer
• Host OS may be Windows, Linux, etc.
• Wide variety of Guest operating systems

• < $200

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 VMware Architecture

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 VMware Server

• Free version released in 2006

• http://www.vmware.com/products/server/
• Runs on any x86 server hardware and OS
• Windows Server and Linux Host OS’s
• Partition a physical server into multiple virtual
server machines
• Target market – IT centers providing multiple services
• Allows separate virtual servers to be separately configured for
separate IT applications
– Provisioning
• Portability, replication, etc.

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 VMware Server ESX

• Total decoupling between hardware and

applications
• High-end, high-performance IT applications
• Oracle, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange server, SAP,
Siebel, Lotus Notes, BEA WebLogic, Apache
• Dynamically move running application to
different hardware
• Maintenance, hardware replacement
• Provisioning new versions, etc.

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 The Java Virtual Machine

• Own idealized architecture

• Stylized machine language
• Byte codes
• Readily available interpreter
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 Abstraction versus Virtualization

• Computer architecture benefits from

Abstraction
– Well-defined interfaces for hardware and
software to use
• Hard Drives, Networking, I/O devices
– Limits based on the hardware implementation
• Virtualization
– Maps interfaces and
resources to various hardware,
even different architectures

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 Architecture Interfaces

• Virtualization can take

place at these junctures
– ISA – Instruction Set
Architecture
– ABI – Application Binary
Interface
– API – Application
Programming Interface

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 Process Virtual Machines

• Also known as Application VM

• Virtualization below the API or ABI, providing
virtual resources to a single process executed
on a machine
• Created for the process alone, destroyed
when process finishes

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 Process VM, continued

• Optimizers, Same ISA

– Perform code optimization during translation and
execution
• High-level-language VM
– Cross-platform compatibility
– Programs written for an abstract machine, which
is mapped to real hardware through a virtual
machine
• Sun Microsystems Java VM
• Microsoft Common Language Infrastructure, .NET
framework
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 System Virtual Machines

• Virtualized hardware below the ISA

• Single host can run multiple isolated
operating systems
– Servers running different operating systems
– Isolation between concurrent systems, security
• Hardware
Managed by the
VMM – Virtual
Machine Manager

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 System VM, continued

• Classically, VMM runs on bare hardware,

directly interacting with resources,
– Intercepts and interprets guest OS actions
• Hosted VM
– Installed application that relies on the OS to
access hardware, using same ISA
• Whole System VM
– Emulate both application and system code for
different ISAs
• Classically: Virtual PC, run windows on old Mac
hardware
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 Virtualization for Cloud

Machine Stack showing

virtualization opportunities • Creation of a virtual version of hardware
using software.
Application • Runs several applications at the same time
on a single physical server by hosting each
of them inside their own virtual machine.

Libraries
• By running multiple virtual machines
simultaneously, a physical server can be
utilized efficiently.

Operating System Primary approaches to virtualization

• Platform virtualization Ex : Server
• Resources virtualization Ex : Storage,
Network
Hardware

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 • Virtualization in Cloud Computing | What is
Virtualization | Intellipaat – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pPlanX5wQY

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