A Survey on Virtualization levels and

Technologies
Humera Aamreen
Department of Computer Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, Virginia
aamreenh@vcu.edu

Abstract: Virtualization technology has emerged as a core
technology of Cloud Computing. It enables the creation of
multiple virtualized resources on a single platform that
fosters easy deployment and management of workloads
alongside providing better performance due to the
independent running of the Virtual Machines. This
widely adopted technology works by abstracting the
underlying hardware or software through an intelligent
layer that provides the necessary functionalities. This
paper surveys the concept of Virtualization and their
architectural components by directing the survey towards
all the Virtualization levels available with a description of
the widely used Virtualization technologies. The paper is
aimed to provide insights into the working of
Virtualization at various levels through a demonstration
of the popular Virtualization technologies at that level.
And the paper also enlists the properties and importance
of adopting this emerging technology.
1. INTRODUCTION
Cloud Computing is a rapidly expanding technology
that has evolved as a chief element in the current IT
infrastructure. It is a pragmatic component of this
edge which renders a large repository for resources
that are available, to its users as services. It
essentially provides these services and products to its
users according to their needs and demands. Also,
these cloud services provide an incessant aid to store
and access the daily prominent data over the internet.
[1]. It enables dynamic configuration, reconfiguration
and allocation, de-allocation of servers, both physical
and virtual, as per the use of its clients. The NIST
definition provides better insights – “Cloud
computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous,
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared
pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.,
networks, servers, storage, applications, and services)
that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider
interaction”. The vast storage and computing
resources and services provided by the cloud are
achieved through the concept under discussion,
Virtualization in Cloud Computing.
Virtualization is a key element of Cloud computing
that provides the virtual storage and computing
services to its users through the internet. In its
simplest terms, “Virtualization” refers to a virtual
image or version of something. Virtualization in
cloud computing implies the making of versions of
servers, network resources, operating system or
storage devices in such a way that its use can be
exploited on multiple machines at the same time,
from different locations, to provision its users with
the desired services. The major role that
Virtualization plays in the Cloud Computing is to
provide an effective way to revolutionize the
traditional computing by directing the workload
towards the cloud while enhancing its scalability and
efficiency. [2]
The concept of Virtualization dates back to 1960s
when IBM developed a Virtual Machine to provide
an interactive and parallel access to a mainframe
computer. The Virtual Machine was created as an
instance of the physical machine to give its users an
illusion as if it were to access the physical machine
directly. It was created as an isolated copy of the
underlying system which would allow users to
develop, execute and test applications in a protected
environment. Virtualization at this stage was
therefore providing better productivity and
management of the hardware resources. Emergence
of Multiprocessing operating systems got Virtual
Machines almost extinct but later due to the increased
PC based hardware and operating system, Virtual
Machines became a greater interest, specifically to
support the execution of multiple applications on a
single machine [6].
The concept of Virtualization can be elucidated
through this explanation provided by [K. Sunitha
2014] as a technique that classifies the physical
computer system into various isolated machines,
referred as Virtual Machines. These virtual machines,
comprising its own operating system and application
run on the host computer as an illusion of multiple
physical machines running on a single system. The
processes running on these Virtual Machines have a
misapprehension of running on different physical
systems while in reality they are running on the
Virtual Machines that share the underlying hardware
of the host machine. It therefore allows the single
physical instance of a resource or application among
numerous organizations or users. This is achieved by
setting a logical name to that physical resource and
creating a pointer to it for accessing. Virtualization
enables multiple applications to run on a single
physical system by providing a means to create,
share, copy and roll back the Virtual Machines.
[16] Virtualization is a component of Cloud
Computing that provides abstraction of the computer
resources, which separates the operating system from
the underlying hardware. Virtualization enables the
use of virtual resources in such a way that multiple
virtual resources can replace the functionality of a
single physical resource and multiple physical
resources can replace the functionality of a single
virtual resource. This paper also characterizes the
difference in the IT Organizations’ functionality
before and after Virtualization. It is observed that due
to Virtualization, organizations that adopted a single
Operating system image on a machine now have the
flexibility of hardware independence for operating
system and applications and where the software and
hardware were tightly coupled in the traditional
environment, Virtualization provides Operating
system and Applications coupled as one entity in the
form of Virtual Machines easily to its users.
The Virtualization technology therefore provides an
abstraction to the single physical infrastructure
functioning as multiple logical resources in the form
of Virtual Machines, by sharing the single physical
instance of resource among multiple organizations
[20]. It combines both the hardware and software
engineering to create Virtual Machines that allow
multiple operating systems to function on a single
physical platform. It is due to the creation of this
abstraction layer that the complexities of underlying
hardware or software are taken over by the Virtual
Machines [3].
2. VIRTUALIZATION COMPONENTS
The Virtualization technology creates an abstraction
of the physical system by dividing it into multiple
logical Virtual Machines running on the host
machine. These Virtual Machines, comprising of
Operating system and Application each, share the
underlying hardware of the physical host machine
and the software that enables multiple such Virtual
Machines to use the hardware of the same host
machine is called a Hypervisor. It lies between the
operating system of the host machine and the virtual
environment. It’s a thin software layer that lies
between the hardware and operating system, which is
responsible for virtualizing and managing the
hardware resources.
Hypervisor, generally referred as the Virtual Machine
Monitor (VMM) is responsible for the creation of the
abstraction layer between the software and the
underlying hardware. It is a firmware, software or a
hardware that enables the creation and working of
Virtual Machines. It provides the essential virtual
infrastructure to the Virtual Machines [20].
Hypervisor allows these multiple Virtual Machines to
simultaneously run on the physical host while
providing hardware abstraction of the Virtual
Machines. It acts as a control system in terms of the
physical resources of the platform shared and utilized
by the Virtual Machines, while managing, translating
and controlling the system [3]. The Virtualization
technology that creates a software abstraction layer
between the hardware and the Virtual Machines hides
the physical resources from the Operating system
using the Virtual Machine Monitor or the Hypervisor.
This abstraction enables multiple Virtual Machines to
run at the same time in parallel, primarily due to the
control of hardware resources lying with the Virtual
Machine Monitor and not the Operating System [4].
Figure 1: Hypervisor
Hypervisors are further categorized into Type-1 and
Type-2 Hypervisors to differentiate their software
operating above the host operating system.
Type-1 Hypervisor, also known as the Bare-metal or
native hypervisor is installed on the x86 hardware
directly and runs directly on the system hardware.
The desired instance of the operating system can be
installed over this hypervisor which serves as a
service console for users and applications.
Type-2 Hypervisor, also known as the Hosted
Hypervisor has the Operating system installed on the
hardware, on which the Hypervisor is installed. Over
this hypervisor is an instance of operating system
installed which runs as an application [16]. It relies
on the host operating system for physical resource
management and device support.
Figure 2: Bare-metal Architecture
Figure 3: Hosted Architecture
Virtualization is mainly categorized into two types
depending on the host type on which Virtual
Machines work. So the levels of Virtualization are
categorized into Process levels and System level
mechanisms. The process level Virtualization is
implemented on top of the existing operating system,
which uses the functionalities of the underlying
hardware whereas the System level Virtualization is
implemented directly and independently on the
hardware without any support from the operating
system available. Hardware-enabled Virtualization,
Full Virtualization, Partial Virtualization and Para
virtualization are categorized under the System-level.
Operating system level Virtualization, Programming
language level Virtualization and Application level
Virtualization are categorized under Process level.
The following section discusses the aforementioned
Virtualization types and their corresponding
Virtualization Technologies.
3. VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES
3.1 EMULATION OR SIMULATION
The Virtualization approach by Emulation enables
the creation of complete hardware architecture in the
software. The functionality of the particular hardware
processor and its associated systems is emulated by
this software. An emulator can replicate a real
computer completely if it is able to emulate all of the
functionalities of the real computer, including
rebooting, switching, reading ROM chips etc. The
emulator tries to run the unmodified guest operating
system for a completely different CPU. This provides
great flexibility to the Emulator since the guest
Operating system need to be adjusted to run on an
incompatible architecture. Besides these advantages,
emulator imposes limitations due to performance
since the emulator works by translating the guest
system instructions to the instructions of the host
system. Since the translation process takes more time,
the emulation method is penalized of performance
issues. However, this can be improved if there exists
a way of changing the guest system architecture such
that the desired task can be performed using the
instructions of the host system, without the
translation overhead [5], [6]. Following are few of
the examples in detail:
3.1.1 Bochs
Bochs is an open source portable Emulator in C++
which is compatible with many platforms. Bochs is
used in the implementation of various x86 CPUs, I/O
devices, AMD processors and custom BIOS. It
provides the ability to run Operating systems inside
emulation, which includes Linux, DOS and
Windows. The primary mentioned use of Bochs is to
emulate the complete x86 PC which includes all of
the hardware devices, memory and the x86 processor.
Emulation of Bochs enables the operating system and
the software to run in the emulator of the host system
just like another system residing within. It emulates
the host system by allowing the applications and
software of other platform to successfully run on the
host platform [21].
Emulation through Bochs has several advantages that
it allows the application of different operating
systems to run on the host. For example, it allows
Windows applications to run on a UNIX/X11
platform. Also, Bochs provide the debugging
capabilities for operating systems since it can access
memory, CPU registers and other related content for
fixing the bug. It is also used as a reference model to
test new x86 hardware. However, Bochs also comes
with limitations that it is too slow to be used as a
Virtualization Technology in practice and also incurs
overhead due to the instruction translation in
simulating any host platform to this specific x86
software [6].
3.1.2 QEMU
Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a fast processor emulator
that combines the functionalities of a Machine
Emulator and a Virtualizer. It is both generic and
open source. It operates in two modes, namely User-
mode and System-mode. The user-mode emulation
enables Linux processes designed for one CPU to run
on another. The Quick Emulator in this mode acts as
a “Process Virtual Machine”. The system-mode
emulation emulates the complete system including
the processor and other miscellaneous peripherals.
The Quick Emulator in this case acts as a “System
Virtual Machine”.
Unlike Bochs that supports emulation of only x86
architectures, QEMU can have different host and
target CPUs. It supports several host operating
systems like Windows, Mac and Linux. The Quick
Emulator includes several subsystems – (i) CPU
Emulator that supports emulation of x86, ARM,
PowerPC and Sparc. (ii) Emulated peripherals that
include VGA display, hard disk, mouse and
keyboard, serial port, network card etc. (iii) Generic
devices that connect emulated devices to the host
devices, like network devices, block devices and
character devices (iv) Machine descriptions that
instantiate the emulated devices (v) Debugger and
(vi) User Interface.
The fast processor emulator QEMU uses a dynamic
translator to convert the instructions of the target
system to the instructions in host system at runtime.
The translation process works by first converting the
target CPU instructions into simpler instructions,
named as Micro instructions which is compiled to an
object file. A dynamic code generator is finally
applied to the object file to obtain the host function
with multiple micro operations. The advantage of
QEMU is that it concatenates the machine code
obtained from the compilation of instructions in the
dynamic translation process. This reduces the
overhead involved in porting the translators from one
host to another. Hence the dynamic translation
process of this emulator makes QEMU easily
portable while providing better performance [7].
3.2 Native or Full Virtualization
In this Virtualization approach, the Hypervisor lies
above the host operating system, as an application in
the user space. With this approach, the guest
operating system and the applications of the Virtual
Machines run above the virtual hardware provided by
the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). The
underlying hardware in this approach allows the
guest operating system to run without any
modifications which infers this Virtualization
approach as Full Virtualization. The I/0 devices in
this virtual environment are allotted to the guest
machines which are directed towards the real
physical devices by the host OS driver or the Virtual
Machine driver.
The main advantage with this kind of Virtualization
approach is that it offers ease of use to the common
users for it only involves the installation of the
software product that offers Full virtualization alike
the installation of any other software product on the
operating system. And the software installed on the
guest operating system can run as if to be running
directly on the hardware. The basic limitation with
this approach is that it involves performance
degradation of about 30% when compared to running
on the hardware directly [4].
Figure 4: Full Virtualization
 3.2.1 VMWare
VMWare is an industrial leading Virtualization
company that comprises three main Virtual Machine
products – VMWare Workstation, VMWare GSX
Server, VMWare ESX Server. The Virtual Machine
Monitors of the VMWare are categorized as
Standalone VMMs or Hosted VMMs. Standalone
VMM is simply a software layer on top of the PC
Hardware that allows the creation of multiple Virtual
Machines. The hosted VMM, however, coexists with
the host operating system utilizing its functionalities
of processor scheduling, memory management,
resource management and hardware drivers. The
Standalone VMMs find its use in servers with
VMWare ESX being an example and the hosted
VMMs are used by VMWare Workstation products.
Figure 5: Standalone VMM
Figure 6: Hosted VMM
The VMWare Workstation comprises three main
components – (i) an Application Portion VMApp, (ii)
a driver in the host operating system VMXDriver and
(iii) a privileged Virtual Machine Monitor, which is
established by the VMApp using VMXDriver. The
Virtual Machine Monitor is given the highest
privilege by the VMApp which loads it into the
Kernel memory using the VMXDriver that is
installed within the operating system to have high
privileges. The host operating system, unaware of the
VMM provides a distinction to the machine in the
form of two worlds- one for the host and the other for
the VMM. The VMM can communicate with the host
using the VMXDriver or the host world.
These communications between the VMM and host
worlds propose a hit back on the performance since
the switches to the host require all the user and
system states to be saved to the CPU which degrades
the run time of the Virtual Machines. This can be
illustrated by the guest operating system that runs
highly computational programs, executed by VMM
in CPU. The highly privileged IO instructions are
trapped by VMM to be executed by the host world
switch. These operations in the VM are translated and
invoked by the VMApp of host world and sent back
to the VMM world. Such communications that
involve intensive IO instructions degrade the run time
of the Virtual Machines [6].
Figure 7: VMWare Workstation Architecture
The VMWare Elastic Sky X (ESX) has a different
approach than VMWare Workstation. The VMWare
white paper [15] defines the VMWare ESX server to
be a virtualization layer that runs above the physical
servers and abstracts the physical resources like
memory, processor, networking and storage to the
Virtual Machines.
Figure 8: VMWare ESX Server
VMWare ESX is different from the VMWare
workstation approach that it does not have the host
operating system. All the IO instructions are handled
by the VMM which uses the shadow versions of the
system structures using virtual tables to trap any
instruction attempting to update the table. The virtual
pages from these tables are mapped to the physical
pages, which is further translated by the VMM to
machine page, the exact one in the physical memory.
Through this process, it becomes easy for the EXS
server to manage the system memory efficiently
while improving the system performance. ESX server
is made efficiently reliable for commercial
deployment by adopting various techniques to
improve the performance while keeping the Virtual
Machines independent of each other [6].
3.2.2 Virtual PC
Windows Virtual PC is a client virtualization tool
that allows the creation of multiple Virtual Machines
that run their own operating systems. The key
features provided by Virtual PC is that by being
integrated with the Windows, it enables the Virtual
Machines or applications to be used like just another
application on windows and allows easy navigation
between the guest and host platforms. It also provides
easy management of the Virtual Machines using
external hard disks and backup disks. The Virtual PC
runs in two modes – a specific Virtual Applications
mode and a full desktop mode to provide the
complete desktop functionalities to the guest
operating system. It also provides network
functionalities to the Virtual Machine with the
abilities to configure the network connections among
Virtual Machines, hosts and external networks [14].
[S. Nanda, T. Chiueh] identifies several drawbacks
with the VirtualPC that it does not support a wide
variety of guest operating systems like Linux, Solaris,
OpenBSD, and FreeBSD etc, unlike the vmWare
Workstation. Also, the authors identify that the
VirtualPC lacks the support for Small Coputer
System Interface devices and provides only a limited
ability for the users in adding or upgrading the
hardware set of Virtual Machines.
3.3 Hardware-enabled Virtualization
This approach enables the Virtual Machines to run in
isolation in a protected environment. This approach
makes the Virtual Machine Monitor transparent to the
software that is running in the Virtual Machine which
makes it appear to be in the control of the underlying
hardware [13].
This ability of the Virtual Machine to run a guest
operating system in complete isolation is provided by
the architectural support from the hardware and
hence the technique Hardware-enabled Virtualization
[9]. The Virtual Machine Monitor that is running
directly on the hardware can control and synchronize
the guest operating system access to the hardware
resources [4].
Figure 9: Hardware-enabled Virtualization
Architecture
3.3.1 Intel Hardware Support
Intel is an innovative corporation that is generating
microprocessors with advanced virtualization
support, updating its technologies according to the
users’ demands. With initial virtualization on server
and mainframe systems, Intel now provides hardware
support for Virtualization. It uses Hypervisors to
allow multiple guest operating systems to share and
access the underlying physical hardware resources.
The software-only virtualization on their IA-32 and
Itanium architecture imposed several challenges at
the core hardware in imitating its features to the
software. As a result, Intel developed VT-x and VT-i
architectures for the IA-32 and Itanium processors
using a full virtualization approach, by utilizing the
underlying hardware which enables the Virtual
Machine Monitor to support off the shelf operating
systems and applications, hence providing better
reliability, robustness and security [13].
3.3.2 AMD Hardware Support
Advanced Micro Dynamics (AMD) has developed
many processors through the virtualization support.
AMD Opetron Processor is designed for providing
optimal Virtualization by enhancing the efficiency
and performance of the virtualization support. It
increases the performance of the virtualized
applications through Rapid Virtual Indexing for
direct memory management. It is also designed to
have minimum switching time between the Virtual
Machines and the direct connect architecture of AMD
enables direct interactions with the streamline server.
These direct connections enable AMD to support a
large number of Virtual Machines on a single server
while maximizing its bandwidth and scalability with
low latency. It also introduces Tagged Translation
Look-aside Buffer for mapping the memory spaces of
Virtual Machines; further to minimize any additional
overhead in terms of memory management. It uses
Device Exclusion Vector (DEV) to provide security
by controlling the access to the Virtual Machine
Memory. These advanced features have made AMD
a frontline in providing hardware virtualization
support.

3.3 Partial Virtualization

In this Virtualization approach, the Virtual Machines

create multiple instances of almost but not all, of the
underlying hardware, specifically the address spaces.
This virtualization approach is therefore also known
as Address Space Virtualization and is categorized
under type-2 hosted Virtual Machines. The approach
works by partially simulating the underlying
hardware for the guest operating system. However,
partial virtualization limits the complete execution of
the guest operating system since it’s not robust to
simulate the complete underlying hardware for the
guest operating system, like in Full Virtualization.
However, the partial virtualization approach can
emulate the hardware platform essential to virtualize
specific applications, which can further enable the
sharing of computing resources and services among
its users [8].
3.4 Para Virtualization
Para Virtualization approach contains easy and
simple implementation of the Virtual Machine
Monitor while providing better performance and
scalability to the Virtual Machines. Para
Virtualization differs from the Full Virtualization
approach in that the guest operating system is aware
of the virtual environment in which it is running since
the guest operating system of these Virtual Machines
is modified to run in the Virtual environment. The
virtual devices in this virtualization approach are also
dependent on the underlying physical device drivers.
Also, Para Virtualization does not simulate hardware
resources, partially or fully unlike the aforementioned
approaches; instead it offers special Application
Programming Interface (API) to the modified guest
operating systems [9], [10].
This approach achieves significant performance
improvement through the modified guest operating
system that can program the computing resources
adequately to the Virtual Machines, thereby
increasing performance. Also, the modified guest
operating system can make direct calls to the
virtualized servers and hence exhibiting faster
operations [5].
Figure 9: Para Virtualization
3.4.1 XEN
Xen is the open source virtualization tool widely used
for Para Virtualization. It exports the paravirtualized
architecture into each of its virtual machine interface
so as to improve the performance and scalability
when compared to other Virtual Machine Monitors.
A lightweight event mechanism is used for replacing
the traditional hardware in the CPU and device I/O.
Data transfer between the Virtual Machines and Xen
Hypervisor is achieved through Asynchronous I/O
rings. These implementations increase the
performance and scalability of this paravirtualized
architecture [6].
The XEN Hypervisor that lies above the Hypervisor
is designed to increase the efficiency and resource
management of the guest Operating system. Xen
Hypervisor carries out the general hypervisor
activities of memory management, power
management also the Virtual Machine scheduling. It
works through two domains – DOM 0 and DOM U.
DOM 0 is a modified Linux operating system that has
special privileges to access physical resources and
interact with the virtual machines of the underlying
hardware. DOM 0 is also responsible for the creation
and configuration of guest domains, DOM U. DOM
U does not have any special privileges, unlike DOM
0 and the Virtual Machines under this domain run
with either a modified or an unmodified operating
system on top of the virtualization hardware [11].

Figure 10: XEN Architecture
3.4.2 KVM
KVM is a Kernel-based Virtual Machine that takes
benefits of the Linux-Kernel feature. In KVM, each
Virtual Machine is implemented as a Linux process.
The Virtual Machines that take advantage of the
Linux Kernel feature has overtaken other open source
hypervisors. KVM utilizes QEMU architecture to
emulate its hardware functionalities like network
interface, memory controller, ROM BIOS etc. Also,
since KVM utilizes the Kernel features, its memory
management is same like any other Linux process
and memory sharing for the Virtual Machine is done
through Kernel Same Page Merging (KSM)
mechanism. KVM can therefore implement any
storage or hardware system that is supported by the
Linux Kernel [11]
Figure 11: KVM Architecture
4. OPERATING SYSTEM LEVEL
VIRTUALIZATION
Operating System level Virtualization is an approach
where the virtualization occurs directly at the
Operating system instead of having a separate
Hypervisor. Since this Virtualization approach does
not support logical separation of the physical
resources, it uses Virtual Operating System
Containers to divide the operating system into
containers or zones. These containers provide
virtualization by enabling multiple applications to run
in isolation on the same operating system. Hence, this
approach achieves virtualization by creating multiple
instances of the same operating system, thereby
virtualizing the operating system instead of hardware
like other virtualization approaches [5]
Figure 12: OS-Level Virtualization Architecture
This virtualization approach imposes only a little
overhead because the applications directly use the
operating system calls and tends to be more efficient
[9]. Examples of Operating System level
Virtualization are FreeBSD Jails, OpenVZ, and
Linux VServer etc.
4.1 FreeBSD Jail
FreeBSD Jails [6] is the virtualization software that
achieves virtualization through its operating system
environment whilst preserving the simplicity of the
UNIX root model. The jail environment typically
consists of the system resources like file system,
processes, data structures and other network
resources. A process gains access to the jail using a
special system call, jail. A process can invoke jail
only by inheriting its access from another process
already in jail.
Jailed processes are bound to certain restrictions like
they only have a limited access to the file system
name space and can only access a specific file system
sub-tree when created. Also, the jailed processes are
restricted to few IP addresses for their network
resources. This restriction prevents the spoofing of IP
addresses since the network functionalities are
completely disabled. The jailed virtual machines are
therefore bound to the specific IP address configured
but are available to the host applications. The
interactions among jailed processes are also limited.
A jail therefore represents an abstract machine
typically that cannot interact or connect to any other
processes.
 5. APPLICATION VIRTUALIZATION
Application Virtualization is an approach that allows
users to run applications in the system using its
system resources without the complete system
installation of the application [5]. This approach
achieves Virtualization by creating virtual machines
at the application-level that enables users to run
applications just like the ones running on the physical
machine. The applications are provided with their
operating system either through a commercial
operating system or by creating an own environment
[6]. Following are the examples of Application
Virtualization technologies:
5.1 Java Virtual Machine
Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is an application
virtualization technology that enables different kinds
of operating systems (like Windows, Linux) to run
the same application (or java program) on each of its
systems so long as they install the Java Virtual
Machine [5].
Java Virtual Machines run Java byte code, which is
generated by Java compilers. Programs running on
the Java Virtual Machine are typically compiled into
this portable binary format of Java Code, which is
executed by the JVM runtime. The JVM interprets
these instructions using a Just-in-time compiler. The
Java Virtual Machine also provides an environment
for the binary byte codes while interpreting them. [6].
The Java Virtual Machine therefore implements the
program for any operating system, hence providing
better flexibility than the traditional machines.
5.2 .NET CLR
The Microsoft’s Common Language Runtime (CLR)
in the .Net framework is Microsoft’s JVM. CLR in
Microsoft is the implementation of Common
Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. .Net
CLR works similar to the Java Virtual Machine, it
takes the source code written in C# or vb.net and
converts it into a byte code namely Common
Intermediate Language (CIL) Code. The Just-in-time
compiler at the run time is used to convert the CIL
code into a native code for the operating system. The
.Net CLR is designed as a language-neutral
architecture. It handles the interactions with operating
system, error trapping and memory management. The
.NET CLR has the characteristics of automatic
memory management same as that of JVM, although
it works through contiguous memory allocation [12].
6. GENERALIZED LEVELS OF
VIRTUALIZATION
Virtualization is further categorized into several
categories depending on the type of resources
virtualized and also corresponding to the type and
system level. Other levels of Virtualizations
mentioned in several papers are discussed below:
6.1 Storage Virtualization
Management and storage of large amounts of data is
crucial to any organization that requires constant
access to its data. Any problem to the data access can
create severe complex situations and can hamper
chief business decisions. In order to prevent from
such storage and access issues, this approach is used
to virtualize the storage system which involves the
management of virtual resources that are created
from the abstraction of physical storage devices. The
virtual logic view to the physical storage devices
helps the users in integrating all the physical
resources [18].
Storage Virtualization is divided into five types:
6.1.1 Disk Virtualization
Disk Virtualization works through the CHS address
of Magnetic disks – cylinders, heads and sectors.
This address is transformed to ordered logical blocks
that are used by the Virtual Machines. This technique
is referred to as Logical Block Addressing that has
revolutionized the management of disks.
6.1.2 Tape Virtualization
This Virtualization technique is applied to the tape
library components – Tape media and Tape drivers.
Tape media Virtualization revolutionizes the
mounting and un-mounting of tapes through the
online use of the disk storage which serves as a
buffer for reading and writing from physical tape,
thereby improving performance and service of tape
media. Tape Server Virtualization makes use of tape
drive tools to control access and guarantee integrity
to the data.
6.1.3 File System Virtualization
File System Virtualization enables users to access file
servers that manage shared network access to the
files irrespective of the operating system they run on.
6.1.4 File Virtualization
This Virtualization technique is used in the
automation of migrating unused to rarely used data to
secondary file storage such as optical disks, tape
drives etc. Both users and applications are aware of
this migration.
6.1.5 Block Virtualization
Block Virtualization enables the creation of multiple
virtual storage devices from the physical disks,
according to the storage demands of its customers
[16]
Therefore, Storage Virtualization provides virtualized
storage resources to its users in terms of their
demands by characterizing the entire disk, file and
block media.
6.2 Server Virtualization
Any corporate organization aims to minimize its
investment on infrastructure and services to obtain
maximum output. Server Virtualization is the
technique adopted by such organizations in providing
services to its users in a resource-utilization manner.
It works by creating multiple virtual servers, the
Virtual Machines, on a single physical server. These
virtual servers run with the functionalities of a single
server, creating an illusion to be one [16].
Server Virtualization is further categorized as the
previous discussed techniques – Full Virtualization,
Para Virtualization and partial Virtualization.
6.3 Network Virtualization
Network Virtualization enables the creation of
multiple virtual networks on the same network
substrate. The Virtual Network comprises of virtual
nodes and Virtual links in the Network Virtualization
Environment. The virtual network lies on top of the
physical network resources.
Network Virtualization works by allowing multiple
service providers to create Virtual Networks that
work in isolation while coexisting in the same
network environment. These Virtual Networks allow
the service providers to manage and deploy the
services by sharing and using the underlying physical
network resources.
This type of Virtualization provides for the
coexistence of multiple virtual network architectures
for the deployment and implementation of end users’
services [17].
7. VIRTUALIZATION PROPERTIES
1. Isolation: Virtual Machines work in isolation with
the physical machine, by sharing the physical
resources and are independent of each other.
Virtualization ensures that different instances running
on the same physical machine are isolated from each
other thereby providing better functionalities in terms
of performance and also fault tolerance, since Virtual
Machines run independent of each other. [19]
2. Server Consolidation: Virtualization enables
multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical
server to provide its users with their desired services
efficiently. This mechanism therefore disregards the
need to install multiple physical servers separately,
each implementing a separate service to its users
[16].
3. Encapsulation: Virtualization approach cleanly
captures the complete state of the Virtual Machines,
including its applications and operating systems, and
also the underlying hardware installed. It also enables
the Virtual Machines to be moved or copied over
multiple systems using its snapshots and clones.
4. Portability: Virtual Machines are configured with
components like memory, CPU and network card that
are independent of each other and they carry out their
functionalities independent of the underlying physical
hardware. This enables the migration of live, running
Virtual Machines without having any effect on the
device drivers, applications or operating system [16].
8. IMPORTANCE OF VIRTUALIZATION
1. Virtualization multiplexes the physical hardware in
data centers. Data centers help in meeting the
increased demands of storage and services by
configuring a pool of computing resources. However,
having an isolated data server for every other service
request would consume lots of resources and money.
Virtualization provides an environment that allows
multiple Virtual Machines to run on a single server,
each meeting the demands of the specific customer
applications. It also increases the physical machine
utilization of the data centers by running multiple
instances on the same machine.
2. The isolation of Virtual Machines enables different
operating systems, with their applications, to run
independently of each other, preventing any
intervention among the activities of the operating
systems. It also provides a fault tolerant environment
due to the independent running of Virtual Machines.
3. It provides for better resource utilization by
consolidating the resources from unutilized spaces of
machines to host and execute multiple virtual
machines with improved performance and better
utilization of the hardware, memory and
infrastructure of the machine.
4. It also enables the migration of running processes
which provides flexibility of moving from highly
loaded machines to lesser ones. Hence the process
migration helps in load balancing while saving on
energy since the process migration does not affect
any ongoing activity.
5. It also provides for software testing by producing
arbitrary test scenarios which are difficult to be
produced in reality. Therefore it enables testing and
debugging of the software before and also during
deploying it into the production environments.
6. It also reduces costs by decreasing the numerous
servers deployed for a workload and hence reducing
the administration costs through the aggregation of
multiple servers and applications on a single server.
Therefore, it fosters resource management while also
reducing the power consumption.
9. CONCLUSIONS
The paper presents a survey over the widespread
Virtualization technology, discussing its architectural
components, levels of architecture and the
Virtualization technologies existing at those levels.
The Virtualization technologies discussed in the
paper are range broadly over different areas like
Hardware-enabled Virtualizations, Operating system
level Virtualizations, and Application level
Virtualizations etc. In addition to classifying the
levels of Virtualization, the paper also characterizes
the importance and reasons of adopting
Virtualization.
This detailed survey on the Virtualization technology
can help in the understanding and analysis of this
emerging technology and can also help in analyzing
further developments in the area. The current
classified taxonomy of Virtualization levels can be
further extended over other multi-layer technologies
that achieve Virtualization.
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