What's virtualization?

Virtualization is virtualization technology, virtualization is a broad term, and in computers it usually means computing components run on a virtual basis rather than on a real basis. Virtualization technology can increase the capacity of the hardware and simplify the reconfiguration process of the software. The virtualization technology of CPU can simulate multiple CPUs in a single CPU, allow a platform to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, and the application can operate in separate space without affecting each other, thereby significantly improving the efficiency of the computer.

Characteristics

Virtualization technology is completely different from multitasking and hyper-threading technology. Multitasking refers to the simultaneous operation of multiple programs in one operating system, while in virtualization, multiple operating systems can be run simultaneously, and each operating system has multiple programs running, each operating on a virtual CPU or a virtual host; and hyper-Threading technology is only a single CPU analog double CPU to balance the performance of the program, the two analog CPUs can not be separated, can only work together.

Virtualization technology is also different from the current VMware Workstation and other software to achieve virtual effects, is a huge technological progress, specifically in reducing the cost of software virtual machines and support a wider range of operating systems.

function Introduction

There are many limitations to a pure software virtualization solution. The "Customer" operating system, in many cases, communicates with the hardware through VMM (virtual machinemonitor, VM Monitor), which is used by the VMM to determine its access to all virtual machines on the system. In a pure software virtualization solution, the location of VMM in a software suite is where the operating system is traditionally located, and the location of the operating system is where the application is traditionally located. This additional communication layer requires a binary transformation to simulate the hardware environment by providing interfaces to physical resources such as processors, memory, storage, video cards, and network adapters. This conversion will inevitably increase the complexity of the system. In addition, customer operating system support is limited by the capabilities of the virtual machine environment, which hinders deployment of specific technologies, such as 64-bit client operating systems. In pure software solutions, the complexity of the increase in software stacks means that these environments are difficult to manage, thereby increasing the difficulty of ensuring system reliability and security.

While the virtualization technology of the CPU is a hardware solution that supports virtual technology CPUs with specially optimized instruction sets to control virtual processes, VMM can easily improve performance compared to the virtual implementation of the software to greatly improve performance. Virtualization technology provides a chip-enabled capability to improve pure software solutions with the help of VMM-compatible software. Because virtualized hardware provides an entirely new architecture, enabling the operating system to run directly on top, eliminating the need for binary transformations, reducing the associated performance overhead, greatly simplifying VMM design, and thus enabling VMM to write in a common standard, with more robust performance. In addition, in pure software VMM, there is currently a lack of support for 64-bit customer operating systems, and with the increasing popularity of 64-bit processors, this serious shortcoming is becoming increasingly prominent. The virtualization technology of CPUs, in addition to supporting a wide range of traditional operating systems, also supports 64-bit customer operating systems.