Virtual machine

A virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (i.e. a computer) that

executes programs like a physical machine.

Definitions
A virtual machine was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated
duplicate of a real machine". Current use includes virtual machines which have no direct
correspondence to any real hardware.[1]

Virtual machines are separated into two major categories, based on their use and degree of
correspondence to any real machine. A system virtual machine provides a complete system
platform which supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). In contrast, a
process virtual machine is designed to run a single program, which means that it supports a
single process. An essential characteristic of a virtual machine is that the software running inside
is limited to the resources and abstractions provided by the virtual machine—it cannot break out
of its virtual world.

Example: A program written in Java receives services from the Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) software by issuing commands to, and receiving the expected results from, the Java
software. By providing these services to the program, the Java software is acting as a "virtual
machine", taking the place of the operating system or hardware for which the program would
ordinarily be tailored.

System virtual machines

See also: Platform virtualization and Comparison of platform virtual machines

System virtual machines (sometimes called hardware virtual machines) allow the sharing of
the underlying physical machine resources between different virtual machines, each running its
own operating system. The software layer providing the virtualization is called a virtual
machine monitor or hypervisor. A hypervisor can run on bare hardware (Type 1 or native VM)
or on top of an operating system (Type 2 or hosted VM).

The main advantages of system VMs are:

 multiple OS environments can co-exist on the same computer, in strong isolation from
each other
 the virtual machine can provide an instruction set architecture (ISA) that is somewhat
different from that of the real machine
 application provisioning, maintenance, high availability and disaster recovery[2]

The main disadvantage of system VMs is:

  a virtual machine is less efficient than a real machine when it accesses the hardware
indirectly

Multiple VMs each running their own operating system (called guest operating system) are
frequently used in server consolidation, where different services that used to run on individual
machines in order to avoid interference are instead run in separate VMs on the same physical
machine. This use is frequently called quality-of-service isolation (QoS isolation).

The desire to run multiple operating systems was the original motivation for virtual machines, as
it allowed time-sharing a single computer between several single-tasking OSes. This technique
requires a process to share the CPU resources between guest operating systems and memory
virtualization to share the memory on the host.

The guest OSes do not have to be all the same, making it possible to run different OSes on the
same computer (e.g., Microsoft Windows and Linux, or older versions of an OS in order to
support software that has not yet been ported to the latest version). The use of virtual machines to
support different guest OSes is becoming popular in embedded systems; a typical use is to
support a real-time operating system at the same time as a high-level OS such as Linux or
Windows.

Another use is to sandbox an OS that is not trusted, possibly because it is a system under
development. Virtual machines have other advantages for OS development, including better
debugging access and faster reboots.[3]

Alternate techniques such as Solaris Zones provides a level of isolation within a single operating
system. This does not have isolation as complete as a VM.

[edit] Process virtual machines

See also: Application virtualization, Run-time system, and Comparison of application virtual

machines

A process VM, sometimes called an application virtual machine, runs as a normal application
inside an OS and supports a single process. It is created when that process is started and
destroyed when it exits. Its purpose is to provide a platform-independent programming
environment that abstracts away details of the underlying hardware or operating system, and
allows a program to execute in the same way on any platform.

A process VM provides a high-level abstraction — that of a high-level programming language

(compared to the low-level ISA abstraction of the system VM). Process VMs are implemented
using an interpreter; performance comparable to compiled programming languages is achieved
by the use of just-in-time compilation.

This type of VM has become popular with the Java programming language, which is
implemented using the Java virtual machine. Other examples include the Parrot virtual machine,
which serves as an abstraction layer for several interpreted languages, and the .NET Framework,
which runs on a VM called the Common Language Runtime.

A special case of process VMs are systems that abstract over the communication mechanisms of
a (potentially heterogeneous) computer cluster. Such a VM does not consist of a single process,
but one process per physical machine in the cluster. They are designed to ease the task of
programming parallel applications by letting the programmer focus on algorithms rather than the
communication mechanisms provided by the interconnect and the OS. They do not hide the fact
that communication takes place, and as such do not attempt to present the cluster as a single
parallel machine.

Unlike other process VMs, these systems do not provide a specific programming language, but
are embedded in an existing language; typically such a system provides bindings for several
languages (e.g., C and FORTRAN). Examples are PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and MPI
(Message Passing Interface). They are not strictly virtual machines, as the applications running
on top still have access to all OS services, and are therefore not confined to the system model
provided by the "VM".

[edit] Techniques
[edit] Emulation of the underlying raw hardware (native execution)

This approach is described as full virtualization of the hardware, and can be implemented using a
Type 1 or Type 2 hypervisor. (A Type 1 hypervisor runs directly on the hardware; a Type 2
hypervisor runs on another operating system, such as Linux). Each virtual machine can run any
operating system supported by the underlying hardware. Users can thus run two or more
different "guest" operating systems simultaneously, in separate "private" virtual computers.

The pioneer system using this concept was IBM's CP-40, the first (1967) version of IBM's
CP/CMS (1967-1972) and the precursor to IBM's VM family (1972-present). With the VM
architecture, most users run a relatively simple interactive computing single-user operating
system, CMS, as a "guest" on top of the VM control program (VM-CP). This approach kept the
CMS design simple, as if it were running alone; the control program quietly provides
multitasking and resource management services "behind the scenes". In addition to CMS, VM
users can run any of the other IBM operating systems, such as MVS or z/OS. z/VM is the current
version of VM, and is used to support hundreds or thousands of virtual machines on a given
mainframe. Some installations use Linux for zSeries to run Web servers, where Linux runs as the
operating system within many virtual machines.

Full virtualization is particularly helpful in operating system development, when experimental

new code can be run at the same time as older, more stable, versions, each in a separate virtual
machine. The process can even be recursive: IBM debugged new versions of its virtual machine
operating system, VM, in a virtual machine running under an older version of VM, and even
used this technique to simulate new hardware.[4]
The standard x86 processor architecture as used in modern PCs does not actually meet the Popek
and Goldberg virtualization requirements. Notably, there is no execution mode where all
sensitive machine instructions always trap, which would allow per-instruction virtualization.

Despite these limitations, several software packages have managed to provide virtualization on
the x86 architecture, even though dynamic recompilation of privileged code, as first
implemented by VMware, incurs some performance overhead as compared to a VM running on a
natively virtualizable architecture such as the IBM System/370 or Motorola MC68020. By now,
several other software packages such as Virtual PC, VirtualBox, Parallels Workstation and
Virtual Iron manage to implement virtualization on x86 hardware.

Intel and AMD have introduced features to their x86 processors to enable virtualization in
hardware.

[edit] Emulation of a non-native system

Virtual machines can also perform the role of an emulator, allowing software applications and
operating systems written for another computer processor architecture to be run.

Some virtual machines emulate hardware that only exists as a detailed specification. For
example:

 One of the first was the p-code machine specification, which allowed programmers to
write Pascal programs that would run on any computer running virtual machine software
that correctly implemented the specification.
 The specification of the Java virtual machine.
 The Common Language Infrastructure virtual machine at the heart of the Microsoft .NET
initiative.
 Open Firmware allows plug-in hardware to include boot-time diagnostics, configuration
code, and device drivers that will run on any kind of CPU.

This technique allows diverse computers to run any software written to that specification; only
the virtual machine software itself must be written separately for each type of computer on which
it runs.

[edit] Operating system-level virtualization

Operating System-level Virtualization is a server virtualization technology which virtualizes

servers on an operating system (kernel) layer. It can be thought of as partitioning: a single
physical server is sliced into multiple small partitions (otherwise called virtual environments
(VE), virtual private servers (VPS), guests, zones, etc.); each such partition looks and feels like a
real server, from the point of view of its users.

For example, Solaris Zones supports multiple guest OSes running under the same OS (such as
Solaris 10). All guest OSes have to use the same kernel level and cannot run as different OS
versions. Solaris native Zones also requires that the host OS be a version of Solaris; other OSes
from other manufacturers are not supported.[citation needed],however you need to use Solaris Branded
zones to use another OSes as zones.

Another example is System Workload Partitions (WPARs), introduced in the IBM AIX 6.1
operating system. System WPARs are software partitions running under one instance of the
global AIX OS environment.

The operating system level architecture has low overhead that helps to maximize efficient use of
server resources. The virtualization introduces only a negligible overhead and allows running
hundreds of virtual private servers on a single physical server. In contrast, approaches such as
full virtualization (like VMware) and paravirtualization (like Xen or UML) cannot achieve such
level of density, due to overhead of running multiple kernels. From the other side, operating
system-level virtualization does not allow running different operating systems (i.e. different
kernels), although different libraries, distributions etc. are possible.

Main article: operating system-level virtualization

[edit] List of hardware with virtual machine support

 Alcatel-Lucent 3B20D/3B21D emulated on commercial off-the-shelf computers with
3B2OE or 3B21E system
 AMD-V (formerly code-named Pacifica)
 ARM TrustZone
 Boston Circuits gCore (grid-on-chip) with 16 ARC 750D cores and Time-machine
hardware virtualization module.
 Freescale PowerPC MPC8572 and MPC8641D
 IBM System/370, System/390, and zSeries mainframes
 Intel VT (formerly code-named Vanderpool)
 Sun Microsystems sun4v (UltraSPARC T1 and T2) -- utilized by Logical Domains

See also: x86 virtualization#Hardware support

 HP vPAR and cell based nPAR

 GE Project MAC then
 Honeywell Multics systems
 Honeywell 200/2000 systems Liberator replacing IBM 14xx systems, Level 62/64/66
GCOS
 IBM System/360 Model 145 Hardware emulator for Honeywell 200/2000 systems
 RCA Spectra/70 Series emulated IBM System/360
 NAS CPUs emulated IBM and Amdahl machines
 Honeywell Level 6 minicomputers emulated predecessor 316/516/716 minis
 Xerox Sigma 6 CPUs were modified to emulate GE/Honeywell 600/6000 systems

[edit] List of virtual machine software

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Process (Application) virtual machine software System (Hardware) virtual machine software

 Baan Bshell Virtual Machine - Baan  ATL (A MTL Virtual Machine)

4GL  Bochs, portable open source x86 and
 Common Language Infrastructure - C#, AMD64 PCs emulator
Visual Basic .NET, J#, C++/CLI  CHARON-AXP, provides virtualization
(formerly Managed C++) of AlphaServer to migrate OpenVMS or
 Dalvik virtual machine - part of the Tru64 applications to x86 hardware
Android mobile phone platform  CHARON-VAX, provides virtualization
 Dis - Inferno operating system and its of PDP-11 or VAX hardware to migrate
Limbo programming language OpenVMS or Tru64 applications to x86
 Dosbox or HP integrity hardware
 EiffelStudio for the Eiffel programming  CoLinux Open Source Linux inside
language Windows
 Erlang programming language  CoWare Virtual Platform
 Forth virtual machine - Forth  Denali, uses paravirtualization of x86 for
 Glulx - Glulx, Z-code running para-virtualized PC operating
 Hec - Hasm Assembler systems.
 Java Virtual Machine - Java, Nice,  Hercules emulator, free System/370,
NetREXX, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, ESA/390, z/Mainframe
JRuby  KVM
 Juke Virtual Machine - A public domain  Logical Domains
ECMA-335 compatible virtual machine  LynxSecure uses the MILS architecture
hosted at Google code. to provide high assurance for embedded
 Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) - systems on x86
currently C, C++, Stacker  Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft
 Lua Virtual Server
 Macromedia Flash Player - SWF  Oracle VM
 Memory Array Redcode Simulator  OVPsim is a freely available virtual
(MARS) - Virtual machine that executes platform simulator designed to simulate
Corewars programs. complex multiprocessor systems at very
 MMIX - MMIXAL high speeds
 Neko virtual machine - currently Neko  Parallels Workstation, provides
and haXe virtualization of x86 for running
 O-code machine - BCPL unmodified PC operating systems
 p-code machine - Pascal  Parallels Desktop for Mac, provides
 Parrot - Perl 6 virtualization of x86 for running virtual
 Perl virtual machine - Perl machines on Mac OS X
 CPython - Python  QEMU, is a simulator based on a virtual
machine.
 YARV - Ruby MRI
 SheepShaver.
 Rubinius - Ruby
 Simics
 ScummVM - Scumm
  SECD machine - ISWIM, Lispkit Lisp  Sun xVM
 Sed the stream-editor can also be seen as  SVISTA
a VM with 2 storage spaces.  twoOStwo
 Smalltalk virtual machine - Smalltalk  User-mode Linux
 SQLite virtual machine - SQLite  VirtualBox
opcodes  Virtual Iron (Virtual Iron 3.1)
 Squeak virtual machine - Squeak  VM from IBM
 SWEET16  VMLite
 Tamarin (JavaScript engine) -  VMware (ESX Server, Fusion, Virtual
ActionScript VM in Flash 9 Server, Workstation, Player and ACE)
 TrueType virtual machine - TrueType  Xen (Opensource)
 Valgrind - checking of memory accesses  IBM POWER SYSTEMS
and leaks in x86/x86-64 code under
Linux OS-level virtualization software
 Virtual Processor (VP) from Tao Group
(UK).  OpenVZ
 VX32 virtual machine - application-level  FreeVPS
virtualization for native code  Linux-VServer
 Waba - Virtual machine for small  FreeBSD Jails
devices, similar to Java  Solaris Containers
 Warren Abstract Machine - Prolog, CSC  AIX Workload Partitions
GraphTalk
 Z-machine - Z-Code
 Zend Engine - PHP
 libJIT Just-In-Time compilation library -
libJIT bytecode

[edit] Extended descriptions of selected virtualization software

The following software products are able to virtualize the hardware so that several operating
systems can share it.

 Adeos is a Hardware Abstraction Layer that can be loaded as a Kernel Module in Linux.
It allows the loading of a real-time kernel as a module, at the same time as Linux but with
higher priority.
 Denali uses paravirtualisation to provide high-performance virtual machines on x86
computers. Denali's virtual machines support specialised minimal OSs for Internet
services. The system can scale to thousands of virtual machines. Denali does not preserve
the application binary interface (ABI), and so applications must be recompiled to run
within a library operating system; in this sense it is similar to the Exokernel.
 OKL4 from Open Kernel Labs is designed for use in embedded systems and is primarily
deployed in mobile phones. It is the only commercial hypervisor employing capability-
based security.
 OpenVZ - Operating System-level server virtualization solution, built on Linux.
 Parallels provides virtualization of x86 for running unmodified PC operating systems. It
also uses a lightweight hypervisor technology in order to improve security and to increase
the efficiency. Parallels has become popular for its ability to run Windows as a guest
under Mac OS X on the Apple-Intel architecture.
 QEMU is a simulator based on a virtual machine, which gives it the ability to emulate a
variety of guest CPU architectures on many different host platforms.
 Returnil Virtual System allows you to virtualize your Windows based system and
requires only a restart to rebuild the virtual machine.
 VirtualBox is an open source (GPL)/proprietary virtual machine developed by Sun
Microsystems. It allows virtualization of x86 and supports various host operating systems
including Windows, Linux, BSD and Solaris. It also supports VMware Workstation
Virtual Machine Disk Format.
 Virtual Iron provides virtual machines for x86 that run unmodified operating systems,
such as Windows, Red Hat and SUSE. Virtual Iron open source virtualization technology
implements native virtualization, which delivers near-native performance for x86
operating systems.
 VMware provides virtual machines for x86 that can run unmodified PC operating
systems. The technology involved in doing this is complex and also incurs (sometimes
significant) performance overheads with hosted VMware products (VM Server and
Workstation). ESX server provides near-native performance and a fully virtualized option
(along with para-virtualization of some hardware components). Xen trades running of
existing operating systems for running modified (paravirtualized) operating systems with
improved performance. Virtual Iron provides full OS compatibility for existing or new
OSes with near-native performance without the performance trade-offs between
paravirualization and binary translation.
 Xen Virtualization system whose motivation differs from that of Denali in that it is
intended to run a moderate number of full-featured operating systems, rather than a large
number of specialised, lightweight ones.
 KVM is a Linux kernel module that enables a modified QEMU program to use hardware
virtualization.
 libJIT Just-In-Time Compilation library is a library for development of advanced Just-in-
time compilation (JIT) in Virtual Machine implementations, Dynamic programming
languages, and Scripting languages. Currently it is used for Common Intermediate
Language, Ruby, Java, Domain-specific programming languages.