Virtualisation Technology MLUG 29 th August 2008 Virtualisation

Virtualisation Technology MLUG – 29 th August, 2008

Virtualisation • Term commonly used for many years • Abstraction of hardware resources – Partial Virtualisation – Full Virtualisation – Operating System-level Virtualisation – Application Virtualisation (Emulation)

Partial Virtualisation • Partial simulation of hosted hardware • Not the same idea behind modern virtualisation • Limitations of running software on partial virtualisation led to Full Virtualisation

Full Virtualisation • Implemented in 1967 - IBM CP 40(VM family) • Complete simulation of host hardware – Indistinguishable from host capabilities • Originally for distributed terminal-style computing

Full Virtualisation • Full virtualisation on x 86 platform in 05/06 • All current “standard” virtualisation platforms are examples of Full Virtualisation – Some vendors such as VMware claimed full virtualisation prior to this, but technically incorrect • Virtual machines by definition are unallowed to “pierce the virtual machine”

OS-level Virtualisation • • “Containers” Often used in Virtual Hosting environments Very low overhead Examples of OS-level Virtualisation are – Chroot (basically) – Open. VZ – Parallels Virtuozzo – Free. BSD Jail

Emulation • I know that you know what this is • Engines designed to execute applications on platform (instruction set) that it was designed on • Play your Super Nintendo games on your PC

Desktop Virtualisation • Examples – Parallels Desktop for Mac – Parallels Workstation – VMware Fusion – VMware Player/Workstation

Server Virtualisation • Examples (OS-level Virtualisation) – Open. VZ – Virtuozzo – Jail – Linux V-Server • Examples (Full Virtualisation) – VMware GSX (old) – VMware Server (v 2 RC 2 is latest version) • This is what I will demonstrate

Enterprise Virtualisation • VMware ESX – Pretty much the standard – Very low overhead optimised host O/S – Hardware requirements are strict – Found in large corporate facilities