Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Dr. Manish T I
Professor
Dept of CSE
SCMS School of Engineering and Technology, Kerala
[email protected], [email protected]
● Virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems on a
single physical system and share the underlying hardware resources
● It is the process by which one computer hosts the appearance of many
computers.
● Virtualization is used to improve IT throughput and costs by using
physical resources as a pool from which virtual resources can be
allocated.
Virtualization Architecture

A Virtual machine (VM) is an isolated runtime environment (guest OS

and applications). Multiple virtual systems (VMs) can run on a single
physical system
Hypervisor

A hypervisor is a virtual machine manager or monitor (VMM), or

virtualization manager, is a program that allows multiple operating
systems to share a single hardware host.

Each guest operating system appears to have the host's processor,

memory, and other resources all to itself.
 Benefits of Virtualization

Sharing of resources helps cost reduction

Isolation: Virtual machines are isolated from each other as if they are
physically separated
Encapsulation: Virtual machines encapsulate a complete computing
environment
Hardware Independence: Virtual machines run independently of
underlying hardware
Portability: Virtual machines can be migrated between different hosts.
 Virtualization in Cloud Computing

You don’t need to own the hardware. Resources are rented as needed from
a cloud. You get billed only for what you used
creating virtual servers
–Choose the OS and software each instance will have
–The chosen OS will run on a large server farm
–Can instantiate more virtual servers or shut down existing ones within
minutes
 Virtualization

Virtualization refers to the representation of physical computing resources in

simulated form having made through the software.

This special layer of software (installed over active physical machines) is referred
as layer of virtualization.

This layer transforms the physical computing resources into virtual form which
users use to satisfy their computing needs.
Virtualization provides a level of logical abstraction that liberates user-
installed software (starting from operating system and other systems as well
as application software) from being tied to a specific set of hardware.

Rather, the users install everything over the logical operating environment
(rather than physical ones) having created through virtualization.

Virtualization decouples the physical computing resources from direct access

of users.
VIRTUALIZING PHYSICAL COMPUTING RESOURCES

The layers of virtualization transforms

these physical computing devices into
virtual form and presents them before
user.

Apart from basic computing devices like

processor, primary memory, other
resources like storage, network devices,
the communication links and peripheral
devices can also be virtualized.
The software for virtualization consists of a set of control programs. It offers all of
the physical computing resources in custom made simulated (virtual) form which
users can utilize to build virtual computing setup or virtual computers or virtual
machines (VM).

Abstraction is the process of hiding the complex and non-essential characteristics

of a system.

A system can be presented in simplified manner for some particular use after
omitting unwanted details from users.

Virtualization creates a layer of abstraction and masks physical resources from

external access
MACHINE OR SERVER LEVEL VIRTUALIZATION

● Machine virtualization (also called server virtualization) is the

concept of creating virtual machine (or virtual computer) on actual
physical machine.
● The parent system on which the virtual machines run is called the host
system, and the virtual machines are themselves referred as guest
systems.
● Virtual machines are created over the virtualization layers.
● A set of control programs that creates the environment for the virtual
machines to run on.
● This layer provides the access to the system resources to the virtual
machines.
● It also controls and monitors the execution of the virtual machines over it.
● Software layer is referred as the Hypervisor or Virtual Machine Monitor
(VMM).
● The hypervisor abstracts the underlying software and/or hardware
environments and represents virtual system resources to its users.
● Facilitates the existence of multiple VMs those are not bound to share
same OS kernel.
● The hypervisor layer provides an administrative system console
through which the virtual system environment can be managed.
Machine Virtualization Techniques

Two different techniques of server or machine virtualization as

➔ Hosted approach
➔ Bare metal approach

The techniques differ depending on the type of hypervisor used. Although the
techniques are different but they have the same end or ultimate goal by creating a
platform where multiple virtual machines can share same system resources
Hosted Approach
● An operating system is first installed on the physical machine to activate it.
● OS installed over the host machine is referred as host operating system.
● The hypervisor is then installed over this host OS
● Type 2 hypervisor or Hosted hypervisor
● Host OS works as the first layer of software over the physical resources.
● Hypervisor is the second layer of software
● Guest operating systems run as the third layer of software.
● VMWare Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC are the most common examples of type 2
hypervisors.
Benefits:

● The host OS supplies the hardware drivers for the underlying physical resources.
● This eases the installation and configuration of the hypervisor.
● It makes the type-2 hypervisors compatible for a wide variety of hardware platform.

Drawbacks:

● A hosted hypervisor does not have direct access to the hardware resources and all of the requests from virtual
machines must go through the host OS.
● Degrade the performance of the virtual machines.
● Lack of support for real-time operating systems.
● Host OS controls the scheduling of jobs it becomes unrealistic to run a real-time OS inside a VM using hosted
virtualization.
Bare Metal Approach: Removal of the Host OS
● The hypervisor is directly installed over the physical machine.
● The hypervisor is the first layer over hardware resources, hence, the technique is referred as
bare metal approach.
● The VMM or the hypervisor communicates directly with system hardware.
● The hypervisor acts as low-level virtual machine monitor and also called as Type 1 hypervisor
or Native Hypervisor.
● VMware’s ESX and ESXi Servers, Microsoft’s Hyper-V, solution Xen are some of the
examples of bare-metal hypervisors.
Benefits:

● It provides better performance in comparison to the hosted hypervisor.

● For bigger application like enterprise data centers, bare-metal virtualization is more suitable because
usually it provides advanced features for resource and security management.
● Administrators get more control over the host environment.
Drawbacks:

● As any hypervisor usually have limited set of device drivers built into it, so the bare metal hypervisors
have limited hardware support and cannot run on a wide variety of hardware platform.
Summary

Type 2 or hosted hypervisors run within an operating-system environment.

Type 1 or bare metal hypervisor does not use any host operating system.
Exploring Hypervisor or Virtual Machine Monitor

The hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) presents a virtual operating platform
before the guest systems.

It also monitors and manages the execution of guest systems and the virtual machines.

A hypervisor or VMM facilitates and monitors the execution of virtual machines and allows
the sharing of the underlying physical resources among them.
Hypervisor-Based Virtualization Approaches

Hypervisor-based virtualization techniques can be divided into three categories as

● Full virtualization
● Para-virtualization
● Hardware-assisted virtualization
Full Virtualization

● In full virtualization (also called as native virtualization), the hypervisor fully simulates or
emulates the underlying hardware.
● Virtual machines run over these virtual set of hardware.
● The guest operating systems assume that they are running on actual physical resources and thus
remain unaware that they have been virtualized.
● This enables the unmodified versions of available operating systems (like Windows, Linux and
else) to run as guest OS over hypervisor.
● In this model, it is the responsibility of the hypervisor to handle all OS-to-hardware (i.e.guest
OS to physical hardware) requests during running of guest machines.
● The guest OS remains completely isolated from physical resource layers by the
hypervisor.
● This provides flexibility as almost all of the available operating systems can work as guest
OS.
● VMware’s virtualization product VMWare ESXi Server and Microsoft Virtual Server are
few examples of full virtualization solution.
In full virtualization technique, the guest operating
systems can directly run over hypervisor.
Para-Virtualization or OS-Assisted Virtualization

●
Para’ is an English affix of Greek origin that means ‘beside’ or ‘alongside’.
‘

●In para-virtualization, a portion of the virtualization management task is transferred (from

the hypervisor) towards the guest operating systems.

●Normal versions of available operating systems are not capable of doing this. They need

special modification for this capability inclusion. This modification is called porting.
●Each guest OS is explicitly ported for the para-application program interface (API).
●Each guest OS needs to have prior knowledge that it will run over the virtualized
platform. It also has to know on which particular hypervisor they will have to run.
Depending on the hypervisor, the guest OS is modified as required to participate in the
virtualization management task.
●OS-Assisted Virtualization
●Best known example of paravirtualization hypervisor is the open-source Xen project
which uses a customized Linux kernel.
Advantages

■ Para-virtualization allows calls from guest OS to directly communicate with hypervisor

(without any binary translation of instructions). The use of modified OS reduces the
virtualization overhead of the hypervisor as compared to the full virtualization.

■ In para-virtualization, the system is not restricted by the device drivers provided by the
virtualization software layer. In fact, in para-virtualization, the virtualization layer (hypervisor)
does not contain any device drivers at all. Instead, the guest operating systems contain the
required device drivers.
Limitations

■ Unmodified versions of available operating systems (like Windows or Linux) are not compatible
with para-virtualization hypervisors. Modifications are possible in Open source operating
systems (like Linux) by the user. But for proprietary operating systems (like Windows), it depends
upon the owner. If owner agrees to supply the required modified version of the OS for a hypervisor,
then only that OS becomes available for the paravirtualization system.

■Security is compromised in this approach as the guest OS has a comparatively more control of
the underlying hardware. Hence, the users of some VM with wrong intentions have more
chances of causing harm to the physical machine.
Summary

Para-virtualization requires hypervisor-specific modifications of guest

operating systems.

Para-virtualization can provide enhanced virtualization performance at the

cost of security.
Performance Comparison Through an Example:
Para-virtualization reduces the load of host machine and can run more number of VMs over a host
machine in comparison to full virtualization.

In a fully virtualized environment, each guest machine consumes 10 percent of the processing power of
host machine whereas in para-virtualization, they consume 4 percent only. In addition to this, the
hypervisor (on which the virtual machines are running) consumes a certain amount of processing power
to support each virtual machines.
The table suggests that in full virtualization, six guest system as running, it can make a host system starve. While in
para-virtualization, more number of guest machines can be accommodated which creates scope for better scaling.
Data presented here are indicative in nature and much better para-virtualization performance is achieved in reality.
 Hardware-Assisted Virtualization
● Inspired by software-enabled virtualization, hardware vendors later started manufacturing devices tailored to
support virtualization.
● Intel and AMD started this by including new virtualization features in their processors.
● The AMD-Virtualization (AMD-V) and Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT) allows some privileged CPU
calls from the guest OS to be directly handled by the CPU. These calls do not require to be translated by the
hypervisors.
● This kind of virtualization is only possible when specific combinations of hardware components are used, and
that did not happen until 2006 when both Intel and AMD started to include new virtualization features in their
processors.
● Hypervisors like Xen, Microsoft’s Hyper-V or VMWare ESXi Server can take the advantages of the hardware-
Hardware-assisted virtualization requires explicit features in the host
machine’s CPU.
OPERATING SYSTEM LEVEL VIRTUALIZATION: REMOVAL OF THE
HYPERVISOR
No hypervisor is used and the virtual servers are enabled by the kernel of the operating
system of physical machine.

The kernel of the operating system installed over physical system is shared among all of the
virtual servers running over it.

All of the virtual servers share a single kernel, it is evident that all of them will have same
OS as the parent system.
The goal of this approach is to create multiple logically-distinct user-space instances
(virtual servers) over a single instance of an OS kernel.
Virtualization solutions such as FreeBSD’s jail, Linux VServer, OpenVZ are few examples of OS-
level virtualization. All of them can run logically-distinct user-spaces on top of a single kernel.

Advantages: The advantages of OS level virtualization is that it is lighter in weight since all of the
virtual servers share a single instance of an OS kernel. This enables a single physical system

to support many others virtual servers than the number of complete virtual machines it could
support.

Limitations: All virtual machines have to use the same operating system . Although different
distributions (like Linux distribution) of the same system kernel are allowed.
Summary

OS level virtualization facilitates the creation of multiple logically-distinct

user-space instances rather than creating complete VMs.
Network Virtualization
Especially cloud-based service development requires each and every computing infrastructure in
virtualized mode

Network virtualization is the process of combining network resources and network functionality into a
single, software-based administrative entity called as a virtual network.

There are two common forms of network virtualization

● Virtual device-based virtual network

● Protocol based virtual network
Virtual device-based virtual network

Here, virtualized devices form the network.

All virtual networking devices (including virtual computers, virtual switches, virtual routers etc.)
communicate using actual (non-virtual) network protocols such as Ethernet as well as
virtualization protocols such as the VLAN.

This is actual network virtualization where the network is formed with all virtual components.
Protocol based virtual network

Rather than virtualizing devices, it creates virtual area network.

Virtual LAN (VLAN) and virtual private network (VPN) are examples of such virtualizations.

These are logical local area networks (logical LANs) where the underlying physical LAN’s structure is
something else.

Here, several physical LANs which are actually part of public network (such as the Internet) can function as
a single logical LAN.

This enables network devices (such as computers and switches) to send and receive data across shared or
public networks as if they are part of a private network.

The devices can communicate using LAN protocols which make faster and secure network communication
Storage Virtualization

In traditional computing system, the storages have always been directly linked with the physical servers.

Virtualized storage systems are linked with servers and actual (physical) storage systems remain hidden.

Like other computing resources, virtualization of storage also happens through layer of software which creates logical
abstraction of the pooling of physical storage devices having linked together by network.

Data stored in logical (virtualized) storage devices ultimately get stored in some physical storage disks.

The advent of Storage Area Networks (SAN) has made the pooling (and hence the virtualization as well) of physical storage
systems easier.

There are many commercial virtualized cloud storage systems available in the market. Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft’s
Azure Storage, Simple Storage System (S3) and Elastic Block Store (EBS) of Amazon are few to name among them.
Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization does not fall under the core category of computing infrastructure virtualization concept.

But it is the key to business as it can lower the total cost of ownership and enhances security of system,
application and data.

Desktop virtualization is different from remote desktop access. Through desktop virtualization technology, any
computer’s applications can be separated from its desktop and user can get the look and feel of some other
environment while using those applications.

For instance, VMware Fusion 7 solution provides Mac-like experience while running Windows applications on a
Mac system.

In an enterprise environment, individual virtualized desktops can be maintained in a central server and users can
access those desktops by connecting to the central server.
 Pros & Cons of Virtualization

Pros
● Better Utilization of Existing Resources ● Simplified Capacity Expansion
● Reduction in Hardware Cost ● Simplified System Installation
● Reduction in Computing Infrastructure Costs ● Support for Legacy Systems and Applications
● Improved Fault Tolerance or Zero Downtime Maintenance ● Simplified System-Level Development
● Simplified System Administration ● Simplified System and Application Testing
● Security

Summary

The benefits of virtualization directly propagate into cloud computing and have empowered it as well
Cons

Single Point of Failure Problem

Lower Performance Issue

Difficulty in Root Cause Analysis

Summary

The positive impulse of virtualization prevails over the negatives by far