Friday, July 23, 2010

Where has hardware virtualization come and gone

The virtualization model that both Hyper-V and XenServer use is model of paravirtualization.  This, to a certain degree, is dependant on the capabilities of the hardware to provide the ability to run a workload.

This is particularly true in the case of virtualizing Windows operating systems on both platforms.  XenServer refers to these as HVM type virtual machines – hardware virtualized machine.

Also, the ever evolving trend is increased offloading of the work of virtualization to the hardware itself.

I recently viewed a webinar on XenClient (the Citrix type 1 hypervisor that is designed for the mobile user).  The entire XenClient project has been an interesting evolution of puzzles and solutions.

Now, back to hardware virtualization.  What is it?  How does it work?  Where is the enablement?

This webinar that I mention:  You can find it here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/808046184  (yes, you must sell yourself to the marketing folks)

Why do I mention a webinar about XenClient?  Because part of this presentation is by Richard Uhlig, Intel Fellow & Chief Virtualization Architect at Intel.  He does some good justice to the evolution of hardware virtualization (yes, Intel’s perspective – but it is interesting stuff).  He does get into some detail pretty quick, if you don’t pay attention you can get lost pretty easily.

I though some of you might enjoy it, and might enjoy a source for this information that really knows it.

In the mean time you also learn a little bit about XenClient – I don’t think they cover the management layer in the presentation though.  That is interesting stuff as well.

No comments: