Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Nice read, this doc. In a native system the operating system maintains a mapping of logical page numbers (LPNs) to physical page numbers (PPNs) in page table structures. When a logical address is accessed, the hardware walks these page tables to determine the corresponding physical address. For faster memory access the x86 hardware caches the most recently used LPN->PPN mappings in its translation lookaside buffer (TLB). In a virtualized system the guest operating system maintains page tables just like in a native system, but the VMM maintains an additional mapping of PPNs to machine page numbers (MPNs). In shadow paging the VMM maintains PPN->MPN mappings in its internal data structures and stores LPN->MPN mappings in shadow page tables that are exposed to the hardware. The most recently used LPN->MPN translations are cached in the hardware TLB. The VMM keeps these shadow page tables synchronized to the guest page tables. This synchronization introduces virtualization over...

Here P.S: I am interested in VMFS/RDM as this consideration is bound to gain traction as we move on to clustering (Oracle RAC, MSCS etc). TLB is yet another issue that needed to be addressed, I'll be reading that paper too.

Richard Muirhead writes about it: Today’s virtualized data center environment is like an F15 airplane, wonderfully flexible but at the same time dangerously unstable if not managed properly. The F15 is widely recognized as one of the most maneuverable fighter jets ever built. But flexibility comes at a price and the only way you can control it is by having very good computer systems supporting the pilot flying the plane. Similarly, the challenge of complexity is ever present in today’s IT environments and the drive towards virtualization is only increasing that challenge. But rather than being cowed by complexity, an enlightened IT organization takes control of it, using the latest tools and techniques – and that includes application dependency mapping. Get it here.

Get the paper here .

Check it out: This white paper offers a detailed guide on Intel VT - a collection of processor technologies that enables robust execution of unmodified guest OSs on VT enhanced VMMs. Download now to learn how your organization can enhance Xen to: ** Create hardware-based virtualized machines (HMVs), fully virtualized domains that can run unmodified guest OSs ** Prevent failures or malicious activities in one domain from impacting another domain ** Improve performance based on changes made to the hypervisor and device models ** Address key virtualization issues for IA-32 Intel EM64T, and Itanium processors ** Provide support for Linux guests, as well as, 32 bit & 64-bit platforms ** Increase efficiency of the control panel, guest firmware, performance tuning & processor, memory, and device virtualization Get it here.

This research report presented by TheInfoProTM and Gear6 reviews the latest findings from TheInfoPro's exclusive end user research studies of the storage and server markets. Infrastructure virtualization and consolidation are top priorities in today's Data centers as IT managers work to control costs in the face of explosive server and storage growth. New and more powerful applications are the key driver behind these trends, and as with any mission critical business service optimal performance is a necessity. It should come as no surprise that nearly 40% of survey respondents cite performance under load as the number one concern when evaluating server virtualization. When determining which applications to deploy on a given server, respondents ranked "performance/utilization" as the number on concern. Get the WhitePaper at their site.

Virtualization refers to an experience that retains the characteristics of a physical or logical resource, without being tied to it directly. For example, the “C:” drive on your computer may represent just a portion of the physical disk on which it resides. This concept can be applied to many networked IT components, to minimize expenses and provide flexibility in the implementation and scalability of resources Get the Whitepaper.

Intel IT tested servers based on select Intel multi-core processors to analyze the potential role of each in Intel’s data center server virtualization strategy. Each server provided significant potential benefits in performance, power consumption per workload, and operating costs over older servers running non-virtualized workloads. The server based on the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 7300 series showed the greatest scalability and used the least power per job when running large numbers of virtual machines (VMs), and proved suitable for achieving high consolidation ratios in a busy enterprise data center. Check out their Whitepaper.

This time its the Kunetzky group: Virtualization can present the image that solutions never slow down or fail by deploying redundant systems. It can optimize the use of systems moment by moment throughout the day. Costs of hardware and software can be reduced in a virtual environment without letting staff-related costs go through the roof. Organizations can put many independent applications on a single system to make full use of the processing power of today’s systems as they track Moore’s Law. They could also use virtualization technology to spread work over many systems to achieve levels of scalability or performance that was simply unheard of just a few years ago. Ok I missed some cool graphics; some real tips etc but I guess upcoming papers might get a bit beefier. Check it out anyways .

IDG sponsored: Virtualization of system resources aboard x86 servers is one technology that has the distinct potential to really change the dynamics of the industry in many ways as it quickly becomes a de facto component of modern computing. Today’s use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to automatically manage the resources of the physical server to efficiently support multiple operating systems, each supporting different applications. This IDC Technology Assessment presents IDC’s view of how virtualization technologies are impacting and will continue to impact operating environments and the operating environment market near- and long-term. Go get it.

More researchers and papers springing up. Latest conducted by " Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique" This one concludes with the following: The evaluation of machine virtualization tools is a difficult exercise. We first motivated the use of microbenchmark to better understand the scalability limitations and merits of virtualization tools. We have described a set of metrics (overhead, linearity and isolation), and related microbenchmarks for the CPU, memory, disk and network resources. These metrics allow testing many aspects of these systems, performance as well as usability. We have compared 4 virtualization tools using this methodology: VMware, UML, Vserver and Xen. We clearly noticed strong limitations with VMware and UML, as previously published by other authors, but we have provided a detailed evaluation, identifying overhead, linearity and performance isolation limitations for all machine resources. Vserver and Xen clearly provide the better performance. However, ...

In this technology brief, IDC examines HP Virtual Connect and the benefits and challenges associated with using this technology to virtualize I/O with HP BladeSystems. It joins the IDC white paper Forecasting Total Cost of Ownership for Initial Deployments of Server Blades, which describes the overall TCO advantages of the BladeSystem c-Class portfolio, as well as the technology briefs Enabling Technologies for Blade Management and Enabling Technologies for Power and Cooling, which focus on the operational and cost advantages of HP Insight Control and HP Thermal Logic, respectively. Go register and get it here .