Taxonomy of virtualization
Virtualization is mainly used to emulate the execution environment ,storage, and networks. The
execution environment is classified into two:
– Process-level – implemented on top of an existing operating system.
– System-level – implemented directly on hardware and does not or minimum requirement of the
existing operating system.
Virtualization covers a wide range of emulation techniques that are applied to different areas of
computing. A classification of these techniques helps us better understand their characteristics and use
Virtualization is mainly used to emulate
● Execution Environments: To provide support for the execution of the programs
eg. OS, and Application.
○ Process Level: Implemented on top of an existing OS that has full control of the
hardware
○ System Level: Implemented directly on Hardware and do not require support from
existing OS.
● Storage: Storage virtualization is a system administration practice that allows
decoupling the physical organization of the hardware from its logical representation.
● : Network virtualization combines hardware appliances and specific software for the
creation and management of a virtual network
Machine Reference Model
It defines the interfaces between the levels of abstractions, which hide implementation details.
Virtualization techniques actually replace one of the layers and intercept the calls that are
directed toward it.
Hardware is expressed in terms of the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).
– ISA for the processor, registers, memory, and interrupt management.
Application Binary Interface (ABI) separates the OS layer from the application and libraries which
are managed by the OS.
– System Calls defined
– Allows portabilities of applications and libraries across OS.
API – it interfaces applications to libraries and/or the underlying OS
The layered approach simplifies the development and implementation of a computing system.
ISA
ISA has been divided into two security classes:–
Privileged Instructions –
Nonprivileged Instructions
That can be used without interfering with other tasks because they do not access shared resources.
Ex. Arithmetic, floating & fixed point.
Privileged instructions
They are executed under specific restrictions and are mostly used for (behavior-sensitive) or modify
(control sensitive) the privileged state.
Behavior-sensitive = operate on the I/O
Control-sensitive = alter the state of the CPU register.
Privileged Hierarchy:
Security Ring
Ring-0 is in the most privileged level, used by the kernel
Ring-1 & 2 are used by the OS-level services and,
R3 in the least privileged level is used by the user.
The recent system support twolevels:–
Ring 0 – supervisor mode – Ring 3 – user mode
Virtual machines are broadly classified into two types:
System Virtual Machines (also known as Virtual Machines)
Process VirtualMachines (also known as Application Virtual Machines).
The classification is based on their usage and degree of similarity to the linked physical machine. The
system VM mimics the whole system hardware stack and allows for the execution of the whole
operating system Process VM, on the other hand, provides a layer to an operating system that is
used to replicate the programming environment for the execution of specific processes.
A Process Virtual Machine, also known as an application virtual machine, operates as a regular
program within a host OS and supports a single process. It is formed when the process begins and
deleted when it terminates. Its goal is to create a platform-independent programming environment that
abstracts away features of the underlying hardware or operating system, allowing a program to run on
any platform. WithLinux
for example, Wine software aids in the execution of Windows applications.
A System Virtual Machine, such as VirtualBox, offers a full system platform that allows the
operation of a whole operating system (OS).
Virtual Machines are used to distribute and designate suitable system resources to software (which
might be several operating systems or an application), and the software is restricted to the resources
provided by the VM. The actual software layer that allows virtualization is the Virtua Machine
Monitor (also known as Hypervisor).
Hypervisors are classified into two groups based on their relationship to the underlying hardware.
Native VM is a hypervisor that takes direct control of the underlyinghardware,
whereas hosted VM is a different software layer that runs within the operating system and so has an
indirect link with the underlying hardware.
The system VM abstracts the Instruction Set Architecture, which differs slightly from that of the
actual hardware platform. The primary benefits of system VM include consolidation (it allows
multiple operating systems to coexist on a single computer system with strong isolation from each
other), application provisioning, maintenance, high availability, and disaster recovery, as well as
sandboxing, faster reboot, and improved debugging acces
The process VM enables conventional application execution inside the underlying operating system
to support a single process. To support the execution of numerous applications associated with
numerous processes, we can construct numerous instances of process VM. The process VM is
formed when the process starts and terminates when the process is terminated.
The primary goal of process VM is to provide platform independence (in terms of development
environment), which implies that applications may be executed in the same way on any of the
underlying hardware and software platforms. Process VM as opposed to system VM abstracts high-
level programming languages.
Although Process VM is built using an interpreter, it achieves comparable speed to compiler-based
programming languages using a just-in-time compilation mechanism.
oJava Virtual Machine (JVM) and Common Language Runtime are two popular examples of
Process VMs that are used to virtualize the Java programming language and the.NET Framework
programming environment, respectively
