C4[1] Morel: Virtualization Vivisection
Uploaded on Feb 22, 2008 / 3481 views / 11872 impressions / 1 comment
Description
Shawn Morel, who works on VMware's
Fusion, details exactly how virtualization works and the challenges of rolling out this geeky technology to the masses.
shawnmorel
I want to post a few corrections from the Q&A section:
1) BT vs VT. Toward the end of the discussion I incorrectly refer to VMware using VT under 33-bit. This should have been BT (Binary Translation). I should also point out that BT is not faster than VT under ALL workloads. For example sys call micro-benchmarks like Passmark 2D (TM) will run faster under VT.
2) The virtualization platform that is being included into the mainline kernel is called KVM http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki. I called it LVM (for some reason I got mixed up with the logical volume manager).
3) I made a mistake about the version under which the Linux Paravirt Ops were introduced. It officially made it into mainline as of version 2.6.20 NOT 2.6.12 (way off on my timeline there - sorry Linux folks): http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4068384009.html
Paravirt Ops (formerly VMI) were available as a patch before that.
2.6.20 introduced both Paravirt Ops (as an opt-in config when you compile your kernel last time I checked) and KVM.
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