Paravirtualization
Encyclopedia
In computing, paravirtualization is a virtualization
technique that presents a software interface to virtual machine
s that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware.
The intent of the modified interface is to reduce the portion of the guest's execution time spent performing operations which are substantially more difficult to run in a virtual environment compared to a non-virtualized environment. The paravirtualization provides specially defined 'hooks' to allow the guest(s) and host to request and acknowledge these tasks, which would otherwise be executed in the virtual domain (where execution performance is worse). A successful paravirtualized platform may allow the virtual machine monitor (VMM) to be simpler (by relocating execution of critical tasks from the virtual domain to the host domain), and/or reduce the overall performance degradation of machine-execution inside the virtual-guest.
Paravirtualization requires the guest operating system
to be explicitly ported
for the para-API
— a conventional OS distribution which is not paravirtualization-aware cannot be run on top of a paravirtualizing VMM. However, even in cases where the operating system cannot be modified, still components may be available that enable many of the significant performance advantages of paravirtualization; for example, the XenWindowsGplPv project provides a kit of paravirtualization-aware device drivers, licensed under the terms of the GPL
, that are intended to be installed into a Microsoft Windows
virtual-guest running on the Xen
hypervisor.
operating system has offered such a facility since 1972 (and earlier as CP-67
). In the VM world, this is referred to as a "DIAGNOSE code", because it uses an instruction code used normally only by hardware maintenance software and thus undefined.
The Parallels Workstation
operating system calls its equivalent a "hypercall". All are the same thing: a system call to the hypervisor
below. Such calls require support in the "guest" operating system, which has to have hypervisor-specific code to make such calls.
The term "paravirtualization" was first used in the research literature in association with the Denali
Virtual Machine Manager. The term is also used to describe the Xen
, L4
, TRANGO
, VMware
, Wind River
and XtratuM
hypervisor
s. All these projects use or can use paravirtualization techniques to support high performance virtual machines on x86 hardware by implementing a virtual machine that does not implement the hard-to-virtualize parts of the actual x86 instruction set.
A hypervisor provides the virtualization abstraction of the underlying computer system. In full virtualization, a guest operating system runs unmodified on a hypervisor. However, improved performance and efficiency is achieved by having the guest operating system communicate with the hypervisor. By allowing the guest operating system to indicate its intent to the hypervisor, each can cooperate to obtain better performance when running in a virtual machine. This type of communication is referred to as paravirtualization.
In 2005, VMware proposed a paravirtualization interface, the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), as a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and the hypervisor. This interface enabled transparent paravirtualization in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or on a hypervisor in paravirtualized mode. In September 2009, VMWare announced that VMI would be retired from future products.
as of the 2.6.23 version, and provides a hypervisor-agnostic interface between the hypervisor and guest kernels. Distribution support for pv-ops guest kernels appeared starting with Ubuntu 7.04 and RedHat 9. Xen hypervisors based on any 2.6.24 or later kernel support pv-ops guests, as does VMware's Workstation product beginning with version 6.
Virtualization
Virtualization, in computing, is the creation of a virtual version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, a storage device or network resources....
technique that presents a software interface to virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware.
The intent of the modified interface is to reduce the portion of the guest's execution time spent performing operations which are substantially more difficult to run in a virtual environment compared to a non-virtualized environment. The paravirtualization provides specially defined 'hooks' to allow the guest(s) and host to request and acknowledge these tasks, which would otherwise be executed in the virtual domain (where execution performance is worse). A successful paravirtualized platform may allow the virtual machine monitor (VMM) to be simpler (by relocating execution of critical tasks from the virtual domain to the host domain), and/or reduce the overall performance degradation of machine-execution inside the virtual-guest.
Paravirtualization requires the guest operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
to be explicitly ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
for the para-API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
— a conventional OS distribution which is not paravirtualization-aware cannot be run on top of a paravirtualizing VMM. However, even in cases where the operating system cannot be modified, still components may be available that enable many of the significant performance advantages of paravirtualization; for example, the XenWindowsGplPv project provides a kit of paravirtualization-aware device drivers, licensed under the terms of the GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, that are intended to be installed into a Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
virtual-guest running on the Xen
Xen
Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
hypervisor.
History
Paravirtualization is a new term for an old idea. IBM's VMVM (operating system)
VM refers to a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The first version, released in 1972, was VM/370, or officially Virtual Machine Facility/370...
operating system has offered such a facility since 1972 (and earlier as CP-67
CP-67
CP-67 was the control program portion of CP/CMS, a virtual machine operating system developed for the IBM System/360-67 by IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center. It was a reimplementation of their earlier research system CP-40, which ran on a one-off customized S/360-40...
). In the VM world, this is referred to as a "DIAGNOSE code", because it uses an instruction code used normally only by hardware maintenance software and thus undefined.
The Parallels Workstation
Parallels Workstation
Parallels Workstation is the first commercial software product released by Parallels, Inc., a developer of desktop and server virtualization software...
operating system calls its equivalent a "hypercall". All are the same thing: a system call to the hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
below. Such calls require support in the "guest" operating system, which has to have hypervisor-specific code to make such calls.
The term "paravirtualization" was first used in the research literature in association with the Denali
Denali (operating system)
The Denali operating system is "an IA-32 virtual machine monitor, that allows for untrusted services to be run in isolated domains."...
Virtual Machine Manager. The term is also used to describe the Xen
Xen
Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
, L4
L4 microkernel family
L4 is a family of second-generation microkernels, generally used to implement Unix-like operating systems, but also used in a variety of other systems.L4 was a response to the poor performance of earlier microkernel-base operating systems...
, TRANGO
Trango Virtual Processors
Trango Virtual Processors is a privately owned company that builds real-time hypervisors and development tools for embedded systems. The company was founded in 2004 by Pierre Coulombeau and Fabrice Devaux. They are headquartered in Grenoble, France. Trango was acquired by VMware in October 2008...
, VMware
VMware
VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary ....
, Wind River
Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems, Inc. is a company providing embedded systems, development tools for embedded systems, middleware, and other types of software. The company was founded in Berkeley, California in 1981 by Jerry Fiddler and David Wilner. On June 4, 2009, Wind River announced that Intel had bought...
and XtratuM
XtratuM
XtratuM is an open source hypervisor specially designed for embedded real-time systems available for x86, PowerPC, recently for LEON2 processors....
hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
s. All these projects use or can use paravirtualization techniques to support high performance virtual machines on x86 hardware by implementing a virtual machine that does not implement the hard-to-virtualize parts of the actual x86 instruction set.
A hypervisor provides the virtualization abstraction of the underlying computer system. In full virtualization, a guest operating system runs unmodified on a hypervisor. However, improved performance and efficiency is achieved by having the guest operating system communicate with the hypervisor. By allowing the guest operating system to indicate its intent to the hypervisor, each can cooperate to obtain better performance when running in a virtual machine. This type of communication is referred to as paravirtualization.
In 2005, VMware proposed a paravirtualization interface, the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), as a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and the hypervisor. This interface enabled transparent paravirtualization in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or on a hypervisor in paravirtualized mode. In September 2009, VMWare announced that VMI would be retired from future products.
Linux paravirtualization support
At the USENIX conference in 2006, a number of Linux development vendors (including IBM, VMware, Xen, and RedHat) collaborated on an alternative form of paravirtualization, initially developed by the Xen group, called "paravirt-ops". The paravirt-ops code (often shortened to pv-ops) was included in the mainline Linux kernelLinux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
as of the 2.6.23 version, and provides a hypervisor-agnostic interface between the hypervisor and guest kernels. Distribution support for pv-ops guest kernels appeared starting with Ubuntu 7.04 and RedHat 9. Xen hypervisors based on any 2.6.24 or later kernel support pv-ops guests, as does VMware's Workstation product beginning with version 6.
See also
- Operating system-level virtualizationOperating system-level virtualizationOperating system-level virtualization is a server virtualization method where the kernel of an operating system allows for multiple isolated user-space instances, instead of just one. Such instances may look and feel like a real server, from the point of view of its owner...
- Cooperative LinuxCooperative LinuxCooperative Linux, abbreviated as coLinux, is software which allows Microsoft Windows and the Linux kernel to run simultaneously in parallel on the same machine....
(coLinux) - ExokernelExokernelExokernel is an operating system kernel developed by the MIT Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group, and also a class of similar operating systems....
- KVMKernel-based Virtual MachineKernel-based Virtual Machine is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions....
- Logical DomainsLogical DomainsLogical Domains is the server virtualization and partitioning technology from Sun Microsystems released in April 2007. It has been re-branded as Oracle VM Server for SPARC since Oracle Corporation completed the acquisition of Sun in January 2010. Each domain is a full virtual machine with a...
- Solaris ContainersSolaris ContainersSolaris Containers is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, first released publicly in February 2004 in build 51 beta of Solaris 10, and subsequently in the first full release of Solaris 10, 2005.It is present in newer OpenSolaris based...
(Solaris Zones) - OpenVZOpenVZOpenVZ is an operating system-level virtualization technology based on the Linux kernel and operating system. OpenVZ allows a physical server to run multiple isolated operating system instances, known as containers, Virtual Private Servers , or Virtual Environments...
- QEMUQEMUQEMU is a processor emulator that relies on dynamic binary translation to achieve a reasonable speed while being easy to port on new host CPU architectures....
- VirtualBoxVirtualBoxOracle VM VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by software company Innotek GmbH, purchased by Sun Microsystems, and now developed by Oracle Corporation as part of its family of virtualization products...
- LynuxWorksLynuxWorksLynuxWorks, Inc. is a San Jose, California software company founded in 1988. LynuxWorks produces embedded operating systems and tools for using full virtualization and paravirtualization in embedded systems...
(virtualization for embedded systems) - PikeOSPikeOSPikeOS is a microkernel-based real-time operating system made by SYSGO AG. It is targeted at safety and security critical embedded systems. It provides a partitioned environment for multiple operating systems with different design goals, safety requirements, or security requirements to coexist in a...
virtualization platform and RTOS for embedded systems - Virtual Machine InterfaceVirtual Machine InterfaceVirtual machine interface may refer to a communication protocol for running parallel programs on a distributed memory system.Virtual Machine Interface is also the name given by VMware to the proposed open standard protocol that guest operating systems can use to communicate with the hypervisor of...
(VMI) - Storage hypervisorStorage hypervisorIn computing, a storage hypervisor is a portable software program that runs on a physical hardware platform, on a virtual machine, inside a hypervisor OS or in all three places. It may co-reside with virtual machine supervisors or have exclusive control of its platform...
- HypervisorHypervisorIn computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
- Win4LinWin4LinWin4Lin was a proprietary software application for Linux which allowed users to run a copy of Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 or XP applications on their Linux desktop.-Overview:...
- x86 virtualizationX86 virtualizationIn computing, x86 virtualization is the facility that allows multiple operating systems to simultaneously share x86 processor resources in a safe and efficient manner, a facility generically known as hardware virtualization...
- XenXenXen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
- XtratuMXtratuMXtratuM is an open source hypervisor specially designed for embedded real-time systems available for x86, PowerPC, recently for LEON2 processors....
External links
- Anandtech - Hardware Virtualization: the Nuts and Bolts Technical article on paravirtualization
- Virtualization.net Virtualization & Cloud Computing