Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

Linux becomes playground for Virtualization Technologies

With the recent inclusion of Xen and lguest into the 2.6.23 kernel aswell as a generic interface for other hypervisors, the Linux kernel has become a playground for virtualization technologies. KVM was added to the kernel in 2.6.20. So what does the kernel have? It has hardware assisted virtualization solution like KVM, Xen PVM aswell as software based solutions like Xen PVM and lguest. Additionally various virtualization techniques like Linux V server, Qemu and others have existed for quite some time.

With the inclusion the of these technologies, the linux kernel provides researchers an environment where they can play around with various techniques and advance the state of the art in Virtualization. I look forward to a future where nearly all the innovations to virtualization will come not from proprietary platforms like MS Virtual PC or VMware but from opensource hypervisors. Linux has played a key role in the past in advancing Virtualization. VMware was one of the first full virtualization solutions and start the revival of the virtualization market, however it was an open source virtualization hypervisor Xen, which actually managed to introduce a software which allowed near native performance virtualization. It was again Xen, which provided support to hardware assisted platforms like Intel VT and AMD SVM.