[Haifux] [HAIFUX LECTURE] Nested X86 virtualization by Muli Ben-Yehuda

[Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda]

On Monday, December 21st (TOMORROW) at 18:30, Haifux will gather to
hear Muli Ben-Yehuda of IBM Research - Haifa talk about

          Nested x86 Virtualization

Abstract

Server virtualization has been widely adopted by the market, and the
number of servers running virtual machines is increasing daily. As
machine virtualization gains popularity, the hypervisor itself, along
with its management stack, becomes a basic and required part of the
system. The next natural evolution phase in the virtualization
abstraction chain is to view the hypervisor as part of the user
workload, and to be able to run multiple hypervisors inside virtual
machines, each with its own set of nested guest virtual machines.

We present an analysis of nested virtualization in hardware platforms
with only a single level of hardware virtualization support such as
the x86 platform. We then present an architecture for extending a
single level of memory management virtualization support to handle
nested virtualization, which is critical for high performance.
Building on this, we then present the first implementation of
high-performance nested virtualization on Intel x86-based systems. Our
implementation is part of the Linux/KVM hypervisor, can run multiple
other hypervisors (e.g., VMware's) and can achieve performance that is
within 5% of single-level (non-nested) virtualization.

The talk will begin by covering the basics of single-level x86
virtualization (CPU, MMU, and I/O). Some familiarity with Linux and
KVM (http://haifux.org/lectures/152/) is assumed, but is not
mandatory. Source code will be shown.

Joint work with Ben-Ami Yassour, Orit Wasserman, Abel Gordon, Zvi
Dubitzki, Michael Factor (IBM Research -- Haifa), Mike Day, and
Anthony Liguori (IBM Linux Technology Center).
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We meet in Taub (CS Faculty) building, room 6. For instructions see:
http://www.haifux.org/where.html

Attendance is free, and you are all invited!

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Future  Haifux events include:

04/01/10 The Offline Scheduler: Raz Ben-Yehuda
18/01/10 The FOSS Community as a Social Phenomenon: Yaron Dishon
15/02/10 VoIP in Linux: Rami Rosen

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We are always interested in hearing your talks and ideas. If you wish to
give a talk, hold a discussion, or just plan some event haifux might be
interested in, please contact us at webmaster at haifux.org