Virtualization: where it came from and where it's going

Copyright © 2009 Kyle Smith and VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2009 Kyle Smith and VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Virtualization: where it came from and where it’s going

Kyle Smith

Sr. Member of Technical Staff

VMware, Inc.


Who am I?

! " Working on cloud computing at VMware (vCloud)

! " Previously at IBM working with Linux on the mainframe

! " Introduced to virtualization by folks at Clarkson University in 2003

2


Agenda

! " How it came about

! " The early days

! " The transition from mainframe to commodity

! " Competition in the commodity space

! " The state of virtualization today

! " The future

3


Motivation for virtualization

! " On the mainframe, it originated in time-sharing

! " Computers too expensive for many to own

! " Turned out to be better to give people a whole virtual S/360 than to run multiple copies of the app

! " On commodity systems, consolidation was the driving force

4


Early work from IBM

! " S/360 didn’t support time sharing

! " IBM wanted to win business from MIT

! " Proposal rejected, CSC began working on an OS that would allow S/360 to TS

! " Result was the control program (CP)

! " Up to 14 VMs, 256K of memory each

5


CP/CMS and S/370

! " CP/CMS ended in 1972

! " IBM introduced VM/370 for the new hardware family

! " Virtual storage introduced

6


Fast forward to the 1990s

! " Client/server is the architecture du jour

! " 1 app per server

! " Virtualized hardware available, but $$$

! " Disco: commodity OSes on scalable multiprocessors

! " Namely, IRIX

7


Disruptive change

! " As with most ideas from academia in the late 1990s...

! " N faculty members + M students + venture capital = $$$

! " And VMware was born

8


Old model: traditional x86 architecture

>"Operating system and hardware tightly coupled

>"Applications often interfere with each other

>"Expensive resources are underutilized

9


“New” model: virtual machines

>"Separate OS and hardware – break hardware dependencies

>"Manage OS and application as single unit by encapsulating them in VMs

>"Strong fault and security isolation

>"Standard, hardware independent environments can be provisioned anywhere

>"Flexibility to choose the right OS for the right application

>"Different from emulation. Instructions mostly executed by physical hardware.

10


Competition heats up

2003: Xen

2005: Parallels, Solaris containers

2005/2006: Intel and AMD add VT extensions

2007: KVM, Sun logical domains

2008: Microsoft Hyper-V

11


Platform Focus Infrastructure Abstraction

High Availability Dynamic

Resource

Scheduling vShield Zones

vNetwork Distributed

Switch Storage vMotion

From solution to platform

Key Benefit = Consolidation

Early Generation Focus Multiple Apps per Machine

Key Benefit =

Dynamic, Flexible Infrastructure

vMotion

12


Wild claim?

! " All the good ideas for virtualization up until 2003 came from the mainframe

! " The good ideas since then have come from VMware

! " (Xen had some too)

! " Without VMware driving the state of the art, the mainframe probably would be dead today

13


! " The problem: A rare timing dependent bug

! " Race conditions, deadlocks, etc.

! " Could occur only 1 in 1000 times

! " Exceedingly painful to debug

! " Test test test…crash – debug a little

! " Test test test…crash – debug a little

! " Solution: Replay execution with the exact same timings each time. But how?

Record and replay

14

Copyright © 2009 Kyle Smith and VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Storage I/O

! " Latency depends on caching, disk positioning

Network I/O

! " Timing dependent on other machines, traffic

! " Other machines may not be present during replay, won’t be in same state as before

User I/O

! " Keyboard, Mouse, etc depends on humans

Non-determinism

15


Recording

VMware is the hardware

! " Hypervisor can record any external events

! " Complete control over when events are visible to the guest OS & applications

All events happen on instruction boundaries

! " Log events with instruction counter value

! " Well, not really, but close.

16


Application - debugging

Debugging

! " Reproducible bugs

! " Mobile bugs

! " Zip up the statelog and snapshot state, mail your bug to the developers

! " Reverse execution debugging

! " Revert to snapshot, play forward to desired point

! " Gives illusion of (slow) reverse execution

17


Applications – continuous availability

Goal: Seamless failover

Primary machine

! " Records a state log of its execution

! " Sends each entry to the secondary machine

Secondary machine

! " Replays primary’s state log in real time

! " If primary fails, simply “go live”

! " Secondary has become the primary

18


Applications – continuous availability

Goal: Seamless failover

Primary machine

! " Records a state log of its execution

! " Sends each entry to the secondary machine

Secondary machine

! " Replays primary’s state log in real time

! " If primary fails, simply “go live”

! " Secondary has become the primary

19


Where it’s going

! " Appliances/vApps

! " Mobile virtualization

! " Virtual desktops

! " Cloud computing

20


Appliances/vApps

! " Based on Open Virtualization Format

! " A DMTF standard

! " Self-contained application

! " Disks + metadata

! " N-tier apps in a single package

21


Attach policies

22


Security

23


Mobile virtualization

24


Virtual desktop infrastructure

Common Thread: solutions targeted at enabling centralized management and control of data, image and applications

Multiple alternative computing options emerging:

25


Why server-based desktop virtualization?

! " The need for “access anywhere” with increasing

numbers of remote workers and offshoring.

! " The promise of operating cost reductions

! " Longer hardware cycles

! " Fewer client-side visits

! " Increased uptime

! " Centralized management = control

! " Centralized data = security

26


VDI architecture

27


VDI architecture (2)

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The shift

Mainframe

+ Centralized mgmt

+ Secure

- Limited access

- Inflexible

- Costly

+ Distributed CPU utilization

+ Added flexibility

- Complex / costly to deploy & manage

- Not secure

- Not efficient

Client/Server + Simple to deploy

and manage

+ Broader access

+ Scale

- Limited flexibility

- Limited efficiency

- Not secure

Web + Frictionless deployment

+ Simplified mgmt thru abstraction

+ On-demand scale

+ Unparalleled flexibility

+ Secure

+ Highly efficient

“Cloud”

29


Acknowledgements

! " Julia Austin

! " Steve Herrod

! " Carl Waldspurger

! " Eric Newcomer

30


vCloud API coffee talk

Tomorrow, 9/16 at noon

http://vmware.com/go/vcloudapi

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Q&A


Further questions?

Send email to [email protected]

Technology

Virtualization: where it came from and where it's going