Virtualization Technology

Trends

Intel Corporation
21 July 2008
Agenda
• Virtualization Technology evolution
• VMMs
– Hybrid virtualization
– Open Virtualization Format Specification
– Virtual Machine Interface
• Usages evolution
 Intel® Virtualization Technology Evolution

•Assists for IO sharing:

• PCI IOV compliant devs
Vector 3: VT-c IO
• VMDq: Multi-context
• End-point DMA translation
IO Device Focus caching
• IO virtualization assists

Core support for IO Interrupt filtering &

Vector 2: robustness & remapping
performance
VT-dvia VT-d2 to
VT-d extensions
Chipset Focus DMA track PCI-SIG IOV
remapping

Close basic Richer/faster: Intel Perf improvements

Vector 1: processor VT FlexPriority, for interrupt
Processor Focus VT-x/i
“virtualization VT-x2/i2
FlexMigration VT-x3/i3
intensive env, faster
holes” in Intel® 64 EPT, VPID, ECRR, VM boot
& Itanium CPUs APIC-V

Software-only VMMs Simpler and more Better IO/CPU perf Richer IO-device
VMM Binary translation secure VMM through and functionality via functionality and IO
Software Paravirtualization use of hardware VT hardware-mediated resource sharing
Evolution Device emulations support access to memory

Past 2005 2010

VMM software evolution over time with hardware support

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
 Intel’s Next Ecosystem of Virtualization Innovation

Challenge Solution Industry Efforts

•Deliver scalable •Designed for Multi-Core Processors

performance for Intel
multi-core servers

•Optimize I/O bottlenecks •Flexibility and Dynamic Load Balancing for

Virtualization

•Simplify network •Unified Networking for Business Continuity and

connectivity to Disaster Recovery in Virtual Infrastructure
the SAN

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Gigabit Virtualization Evolution:
Next Generation Usage Models Through Virtualization Innovation

Wire Speed Rx Side

Today’s
What’sNetworking
Coming Performance With VMDq on
Intel® 82598 10 Gigabit
Ethernet Controller
VM1 VM2 VMn
… 10.0
vNIC vNIC vNIC

9.5
9.2
8.0
Layer 2 Software Switch
VMM

Throughput (Rx)
6.0
…

4.0
Layer 2 Sorter 4.0
NIC
w/ VMDq MAC/PHY 2.0

0.0

LAN w/o VMDq w/ MNDq w/ VMDq JF*

Source: Intel
Virtualization Performance
Robust Tick Tock Roadmap
100% Virtualization SW
Overhead

100%
Virtualization SW 85% EPT,
Overhead VPID,
100% VMDq2
Virtualization SW 85%
Overhead VMDq
Intel® VT-d 70%
85% Intel® VT-
x, 70%
FlexPriorit
70% y 45nm
Quad-Core Intel® 45nm 55%
Next generation
Xeon® 55%
Processors Intel® Core™ Intel
55%
uArchitecture uArchitecture
Intel Xeon 5100,
5300, 7300 (Nehalem)
(Penryn)

2006 / 2007 2007 / 2008 2008 / 2009

Roadmap will continue to deliver higher raw performance (Moore’s Law), and
architectural enhancements to improve efficiency in virtualized environments

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
Intel virtualization in embedded devices

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
PC vs. Devices
• VM in KVM (along with Qemu) means “PC”
– Legacy devices, interrupt controllers, timers, ACPI/BIOS, PCI devices, monitor,
keyboard, mouse, etc.
• There are various devices or computers that are not compatible with PC
– Network routers, …, robots, …, toasters, …, PDAs/MIDs, …
– Some can afford very small amount of memory (e.g. 128MB)
• And various operating systems and apps have been developed for those
• Porting such (legacy) OS, drivers, and apps to “PC” is not straightforward

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
Benefits of Using Virtualization for Embedded Systems

• Portability & Maintainability

– Provides simplified and uniformed VM to minimizing porting and
maintenance efforts
– Once virtualized, it’s independent of H/W
• Scalability & Consolidation
– Legacy operating systems often support UP only
– Multiple instances of VMs
• Reliability & Protection
– Tolerate and isolate fatal errors in legacy OS guest and software to avoid
system crash
– Sandboxing

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
What’s Mini-VM and Why?

• Bare minimum and simple VM

– CPU(s), memory, abstracted (PV) devices
• Timer, front-end devices (or virtio)
– Start from protected (or 64-bit) mode with paging enabled; no real mode; No
BIOS
• Protected execution environment by H/W
– Run under H/W-assisted virtualization
– Allow Ring-0 operations, eliminating burden of para-virtualizingCPU
• Low virtualization overheads
– Use hybrid virtualization (PV + H/W-assisted virtualization)
– Real-time (e.g. direct paging mode)

Check at the Mini-VM project…

All timeframes, dates, and products are subject to change without further notification
Hybrid virtualization
• Use hardware-assisted virtualization
– The cost of VM exit/entry will be even lower in the future
– Cost of VMCALL is lower than other VM exits
• Use para-virtualization on focused areas
– Starting from hardware-assisted full-virtualization
• Easier to share the kernel binary with the native
– Reduce paravirtual operations significantly
• The kernel regains the native CPU features lost in software only para-
virtualization
– Fast system calls
– Global pages
– Paging-based protection (U/S), etc.
– Privileged instructions
– GDT, IDT, LDT, TSS, cli/sti, etc.
• Standard exceptions/interrupts
Focus areas for hybrid virtualization
• Timer
• Scheduling
– Idle handling
• Interrupt controllers
• MMU
– Memory overcommit
– Or hardware-assisted (i.e. EPT or NPT)
• Inter VMs communication
Usage trends
• Business continuity
– High availability support through the synchronization of VMs
– Reduction of unplanned downtime
• Seamless management of resources
– Livemigration
– Service Oriented Architectures leveraged by Virtualization
• Beginning of growth curve-expansion for desktop and application
virtualization
– Increased focus on security
– Licensing issues/changing
• Virtual Machines mobility
– Open Virtualization Format Specification
– Virtual Machines Interface
– Live migration
• Graphics virtualization
– From a paravirtualization to a direct access approach
The future of Virtualization
Cloud computing
• Cloud computing relates to the underlying architecture in which the
services are designed
• Applications run somewhere on the “cloud” we don’t care where
• Big news is for application developers and IT operations.
– develop, deploy and run applications that can easily grow capacity
(scalability), work fast (performance), and never — or at least rarely — fail
(reliability)
• Infrastructures should have these characteristics:
– Self-healing: hot backup application
– SLA-driven
– Multi-tenancy: built in a way that allows shared infrastructure
– Service-oriented
– Virtualized
– Linearly Scalable: The system shall be predictable and efficient in growing
the application
– Data management
Desktop/App virtualization Market expansion
According to a recent tracker study on the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) thin
client market, total sales of thin clients in 1H 2007 reached 282,667 units,
representing an increase of 37.3% over the previous year. Revenue likewise
increased 29.2% over the same period
Across the various verticals, the predominant role of thin clients across the region has
shifted away from government/education segment to financial services as the
leading vertical of thin client adoption from 1H 2006 onwards
Open Virtualization Format Specification
OVF Specification from DMTF describes an open, secure, portable, efficient
and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software in
(collections of) virtual machines

• Optimized for distribution

• Optimized for a simple, automated user experience
• Supports both single VM and multiple-VM configurations
• Portable VM packaging
• Vendor and platform independent
• Extensible
• Localizable
• Open standard
OVF Packages
• package.ovf -> metadata descriptor (required)
• package.mf -> manifest (optional) containing the SHA-1 digests of
individual files in the package
• package.cert -> signature of the digest (optional) along with the base64-
encoded X.509 certificate
• de-DE-resources.xml -> OVF Envelope describes VMS metadata
• vmdisk1.vmdk -> no specific disk format to be used is required
• vmdisk2.vmdk
• resource.iso -> (optional)

• Distribution
– OVF package can be made available as a set of files
– OVF package can be stored as a single file using the TAR format. The
extension should be .ova (open virtual appliance or application)
Virtual Machine Interface
In 2005, VMware proposed a paravirtualization interface, the Virtual Machine
Interface (VMI), as a communication mechanism between the guest operating
system and the hypervisor
An implementation of this standard was merged in the main Linux kernel version
2.6.21

Motivations
• Portability: it should be easy to port a guest OS to use the API
• High performance: the API must not obstruct a high performance hypervisor
implementation
• Maintainability: it should be easy to maintain and upgrade the guest OS
• Extensibility: it should be possible for future expansion of the API

No considerable adoption of the proposed VMI architecture, although a pending need

to be satisfied (considering HVM additions as new x86 support)
What about proposing an interface from the platform?
Wrap up
• Virtualization Technology Introduction
– Beginnings of Virtualization Technology in x86
– Approaches to server and client virtualization
• Virtualization Usages in Servers
– IT business needs behind Virtualization Technology
• VMMs / Hypervisors
– Deep dive in the open source Xen hypervisor
– Overview of KVM, VMware, OpenVZ
• Hardware assisted Virtualization
– Software solution for x86 virtualization
– Enhancements through hardware assisted virtualization
– Intel VT features
• Virtualization Technology trends
– VMMs standardization and VMs mobility
– Virtualization in every platform
How to start…
• Do I need virtualization?
– Consider the server side
• Lab in the University
• Data Center consolidation
• Environments for server applications development
– Consider the clients side
• VMs for each student
• VMs for users with low processing power needs
• Which do I choose?
– Open source for teaching/learning purposes
• Choose the right one for your needs
– Commercial solutions for highly dynamic data centers
• Can I do some research in the area?
– Several open source projects in the software side with pending topics
– Standards to integrate virtualization through manageability
Gracias!
Thank
You!
Backup
Additional information sources:
• For specifications and to learn more
– Intel® VT Web Site:
– http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/virtualization/
– Intel Virtualization Software Community:
– http://www.intel.com/software/virtualization

• Online collateral on Intel® VT-x/VT-i

 http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/index.htm?iid=technology_virtualizationengage+body_intel64manual
References
• http://www.dmtf.org/standards/published_documents/DSP0243_1.0.0.pdf
• http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmi_specs.pdf
• http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/
• http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-merge/2005-08/msg00076.html
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/d/afdfd50d-6eb9-425e-84e1-b4085a80e3
4e/SYS-T312_WH07.pptx
• http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Open_Topics_For_Discussion?
action=AttachFile&do=get&target=XenLoop_+A+Transparent+High+Performance+I
nter-VM+pdf
• http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Open_Topics_For_Discussion?
action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Memory+Overcommit.pdf
Server Virtualization is now considered a mainstream
technology among IT buyers. 41% of new server x86 purchased in 2007
IT professional are bullish in future use: driving 45% will be virtualized
server use in 12 months - IDC End User Study; Jun-06
-IDC Directions 2007 Feb-07

>81% of business are using virtualization in

production environments
- 451 Group Special Report – Dec-06
• Traditional benchmarking covers Performance, Power, Scalability
– Metrics: Throughput (MB/s), Response time, #users, etc
– Micro-architecture focus: cache sizing, frequency, bandwidth, etc.
• New technology requires new areas of analysis and metrics
– Areas of focus driven by use models.
• E.g., VM migration time, VM utilization
– Need to measure how Intel® Virtualization technology benefits end-users and ISVs
• Virtualization presents unique challenges
– Which configurations to focus on
• Homogeneous or heterogeneous OS
• Number Virtual Machines
• Configuration of individual VMs (CPU, Memory, NIC, HBA, HDD)
– Measuring performance
• Virtual clock accuracy induces platform dependent error
• Availability of performance monitoring capabilities

• Consolidation use case adds additional testing challenges

– Synchronicity: Use automation scripts
– Utilization: Avoid harmonic bottlenecks
– Steady State: Easy, repeatable measurements

• Only way to overcome the challenges is to develop the benchmarks

– Tier consolidation using SAP SD
– vConsolidate: a server application consolidation benchmark
• Description
– Benchmark that represents predominant use case -> server application
consolidation
– Application types selected for consolidation guided by market data
• vConsolidate provides
– A methodology for measuring performance in a consolidated environment
– A means for fellow travelers to publish virtualization performance proof points
– The ability to analyze performance across VMMs and hardware platforms
• Knowledge obtained  SPEC virtualization workload
• 5 Virtual Machines
• 3 Clients: Controller, Mail, and Web
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others
• Consolidation Stack Unit – (CSU)
• Smallest granule in vCon
• Consist of 5 Virtual Machines
– Database
– Commercial Mail
– Web Server
– Java Application Server
– Idle
• Each CSU represents single score
• Final score is aggregate of the individual CSU scores
• Running vConsolidate
– Controller application
• Starts the tests via helper scripts; Runs for 30 minutes
• Stops the test and reports score
– Time measured in “Controller Client”  external timer
• Scoring
– The “Controller” application
calculates final score
– SpecJBB, Sysbench and
Loadsim - transactions/
second
– WebBench – throughput
• CSU Final Score = GEOMEAN
(VM Relative Perf[i])
• Seeding Industry with Benchmark Workloads
– vConsolidate– Consolidated stack of business workloads consisting of Server Side Java, Commercial Database, Commercial
Mail, Commercial Web Server on 4 VMs
• Collaborating with Virtualization leaders
– Microsoft and OEMs - consolidation workloads, methodology & metrics
– VMware – VMmark* consolidation stack
• Establishing benchmarks with ISV/OSVs
• Contributing to standard benchmarks through SPEC (long term)

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.