Thanks to virtualization technology, the cloud computing process has come early

As an important computer support technology, virtual technology plays a key role in cloud computing. Thanks to virtualization software technology, the cloud computing implementation process has come in advance.

Virtualization computing can exist between any level of the computer, from the application to the bottom of the hardware layer, the real level of virtual, replace the real level to the upper layer, the upper and lower layers of the relationship to the coupling, so that the lower level of transparency, the next layer to the virtual layer to achieve operational functions.

Of course, virtualization technology is software technology, is the function of hardware simulation, the need for complex semantics and mechanisms to control and collaborate to achieve, which means that the increase in overhead, has some impact on performance, but with the continuous development of virtualization technology and the continuous improvement of the basic platform performance, this problem has been well resolved, So that the spread of cloud computing has a good time.

Server virtualization is the core of cloud computing infrastructure, through the analysis of server virtualization technology, it shows the production platform needed for cloud computing service promotion, and it has certain guiding function to the company that manages cloud service.

1 server virtualization technology and its value advantages

There are many definitions of virtualization, which can be summed up as logical techniques that are accessed in an integrated, abstract way (invoking computer resources, based on physical mechanisms, without physical limitations.) Virtualization can be virtualized for any hardware resource, such as the central Processing unit (CPU), memory, hard disk and input, output (I/O) interfaces, or virtual software environments, such as the operating system (file systems and applications). The connotation of virtual technology determines its core support position in cloud computing, and for Cloud, the first is virtual resource pool, no pool is integrated.

Server virtualization technology is the most important, is the system to virtualize the technology applied to the server, the physical server has been virtual into multiple servers, for the application of centralized processing, multiple server processing programs or data, through the virtual technology placed to 1 servers for processing, can cross the physical platform without the limitations of the physical platform.

Cloud computing is the total virtualization of IT resources, and server virtualization technology is consistent with this goal.

Products based on application, the same virtualization must follow the market, in the cost and operating between the value can move to the commercial field. The time mentioned earlier, the server virtualization technology embodies a great value advantage, analysis is as follows:

1 reduce operating costs. The management transformation of information service providers requires strict control of the cost, and the investment tends to be refined. Enterprise IT operating costs, mainly focused on data center investment, which involves two parts: first, hardware and licensing services to support the cost of input, the second is the operation of maintenance costs. Server virtualization not only gives full play to server performance, but also relies on powerful virtualization service environment management tools to automate management and reduce human intervention. The overall investment in the data center has fallen sharply, showing huge cost-saving space in cost control.

2 The application of flattening, the platform to be transparent. There are multiple platforms in existing data centers. This means that the application of a large increase in complexity, different platforms, to consider the operating system and middleware and other aspects of the application of the platform in the release, integration and management of the huge debugging difficulties, the application of the market cycle of the corresponding too long. Server virtualization technology can solve this problem very well, the application and hardware platform isolation, the bottom of the environment changes in the adjustment times significantly reduced, the application is created to the virtual platform can be, equivalent to the platform for encapsulation, across the platform limit.

3 Improve the efficiency of product launch, speed up the application of the market demand response speed. Data center deployment applications now generally experience the following steps: Picking physical machines, installing middleware, installing applications, configuring, testing, and running. The application publishing cycle is a few days. Application deployment requires personnel to track the whole process, different areas of different modules in the communication of people with the understanding of the problem, easy to lead to the link junction error. Virtualization of server technology, so that the application deployment cycle significantly shortened, only a few simple steps: Input activation configuration parameters, copy the virtual machine, start the virtual machine and activate the virtual machine, the cycle is generally more than 10 minutes. Obviously, virtualization server technology has a natural advantage over the application deployment and rapid response to market demands.

4 innovative backup and recovery technologies, real-time migrations improve service availability. The steady uninterrupted supply of services is the primary consideration for cloud computing service providers. Older data centers use multiple physical machines, multiple manual backups, and availability management tools to protect service recovery in the case of failure. After server virtualization, the data center, virtualized resources correspond to each virtual machine, is encapsulated and isolated by virtual machine management program, backup operation for each virtual machine, the operation of the mirror can be dynamically migrated to the new virtual machine or new physical machine as required. Dynamic migration technology is based on virtual pool, not limited to one physical machine, which makes service availability automatically promoted in the dynamic migration of multiple physical machines.

5. Integrate resources and improve resource utilization. The popularity of cloud computing is accompanied by inefficient application of resources, centralized resource management is endowed with new life, this is an important time to promote cloud computing. According to the Coogle report, the utilization of hardware resources in enterprise data centers is between 5% and 20%. The use of server virtual technology, in the original application of the same basis, concentrated on a physical machine, so that the utilization of physical resources significantly increased, the corresponding reduction of hardware input, saving that is wealth.

6) Green. Global development Today, the Government calls for technological innovation to reduce the wastage of resources. This is also an important opportunity, leading to the spread of cloud computing, the IT community is almost reached a consensus, a strong push. Server virtualization computing, while increasing resource utilization, can effectively manage energy consumption, shutting down X86 (Microsoft computer architecture) servers and applications. In addition, the operating environment of the temperature control, reduce ancillary equipment such as air-conditioning a large amount of power consumption, the overall green low-carbon purpose.

2 Server Virtualization Key Technologies

Server virtualization is the abstraction of hardware and the management of virtualization.

Server virtual: The first is to 3 kinds of basic hardware resources CPU, memory, equipment and OS virtualization, the second is to rely on virtual machine real-time migration of this auxiliary technology, the resource virtual city for unified scheduling and use. The key technologies of server virtualization are resolved as follows:

1 CPU Virtualization.

Virtual CPU will be a physical CPU, a physical CPU can only handle the instructions of a virtual CPU, can not correspond to multiple virtual CPU instructions. The operating system can use one or more virtual CPUs, which are isolated from each other in the system.

The problem with the virtualization of CPUs is that the operating system performs privileged command functions in virtualized environments. Most of the current operating systems are based on the X86 architecture, which is required to run directly on the physical machine at design time and complete with the entire underlying physical hardware. For CPUs, there are 4 running levels in the X86 system, Ringo (instruction level), ring1,rin92 and Ring3. In particular, the Ringo level, the execution of any instructions, including changes to the CPU state, such as the instructions, known as privileged directives, can only be done at the Rin90 level.

Virtualization of the X86 architecture, requires the operating system and the underlying hardware to join the virtual layer, and Rin90 can only run in the virtual layer, which causes the operating system's privileged instructions can not run directly on the hardware, operating systems such as interrupt processing, and other privileged operations can not be completed. It is this dilemma that makes CPU virtualization based on the X86 architecture more difficult to implement.

In order to solve this problem, the industry at the beginning of the proposed total virtualization and half virtualization 2 software solutions.