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UNIT III
VIRTUALIZATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND DOCKER
Desktop Virtualization – Network Virtualization – Storage Virtualization – System-
level of Operating Virtualization – Application Virtualization
– Virtual clusters and Resource Management – Containers vs. Virtual Machines –
Introduction to Docker – Docker Components – Docker Container – Docker Images
and Repositories.

PART A
2 Marks

1. How to implement internal network virtualization? [CO3,K1]

The guest can share the same network interface of the host and use Network Address
Translation (NAT) to access the network;The virtual machine manager can emulate,
and install on the host, an additional network device, together with the driver.The
guest can have a private network only with the guest.
2. What is Hardware-level virtualization? [CO3,K1]

Hardware-level virtualization is a virtualization technique that provides an abstract

execution environment in terms of computer hardware on top of which a guest
operating system can be run.

3. Define hypervisor? [CO3,K1]

The hypervisor is generally a program or a combination of software and hardware that

allows the abstraction of the underlying physical hardware.
Hypervisors is a fundamental element of hardware virtualization is the hypervisor, or
virtual machine manager (VMM).

4. Mention the advantages of SAN? [CO3,K1]

There are different techniques for storage virtualization, one of the most popular
being network based virtualization by means of storage area networks (SANs).SANS
use a network accessible device through a large bandwidth connection to provide
storage facilities.

5. What is Operating system-level virtualization? [CO3,K1]

• Operating system-level virtualization offers the opportunity to create different and

separated execution environments for applications that are managed concurrently.

• Differently from hardware virtualization, there is no virtual machine manager or

hypervisor, and the virtualization is done within a single operating system, where the
OS kernel allows for multiple isolated user space instances.

6. What is storage virtualization? [CO3,K1]

• Storage virtualization is a system administration practice that allows decoupling the

physical organization of the hardware from its logical representation.Using this
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technique, users do not have to be worried about the specific location of their data,
which can be identified using a logical path.

7. Define Desktop virtualization? [CO3,K1]

● ◆ Desktop virtualization abstracts the desktop environment available on a

personal computer in order to provide access to it using a client/server approach.

• Desktop virtualization provides the same outcome of hardware virtualization but

serves a different purpose.

8. What is Network Migration? [CO3,K1]

A migrating VM should maintain all open network connections without relying on

forwarding mechanisms on the original host or on support from mobility or
redirection mechanisms.
To enable remote systems to locate and communicate with a VM, each VM must be
assigned a virtual IP address known to other entities.

9. Differentiate between physical and virtual cluster [CO3,K2]

A physical cluster is a collection of physical servers / machines interconnected by a

physical network such as a LAN. On the other hand, A virtual cluster is a collection of
virtual servers / machines interconnected by a virtual network

10. List the issues in migration process? [CO3,K1]

Memory Migration

File System Migration

Network Migration
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PART B
13 Marks

1. Write a short notes on Desktop virtualization? [CO3,K1]

(Definition:2 marks,Concept explanation:11 marks)

Desktop virtualization abstracts the desktop environment available on a personal

computer in order to provide access to it using a client/server approach.
Desktop virtualization provides the same outcome of hardware virtualization but
serves a different purpose.Similarly to hardware virtualization, desktop virtualization
makes accessible a different system as though it were natively installed on the host
but this system is remotely stored on a different host and accessed through a network
connection.
Moreover, desktop virtualization addresses the problem of making the same desktop
environment accessible from everywhere.
Although the term desktop virtualization strictly refers to the ability- environment,
generally the desktop
Although the term desktop virtualization strictly refers to the ability to remotely
access a desktop environment, generally the desktop environment is stored in a
remote server or a data center that provides a high availability infrastructure and
ensures the accessibility and persistence of the data.
In this scenario, an infrastructure supporting hardware virtualization is fundamental
to provide access to multiple desktop environments hosted on the same server.A
specific desktop environment is stored in a virtual machine image that is loaded and
started on demand when a client connects to the desktop environment.This is a typical
cloud computing scenario in which the user leverages the virtual infrastructure for
performing the daily tasks on his computer. The advantages of desktop virtualization
are high availability, persistence, accessibility, and ease of management.
The basic services for remotely accessing a desktop environment are implemented in
software components such as Windows Remote Services, VNC, and X Server.
Infrastructures for desktop virtualization based on cloud computing solutions include
Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Parallels Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
(VDI), Citrix XenDesktop, and others.

2. Explain in detail about Network virtualization? [CO3,K4]

(Definition:2 marks,Concept explanation:11 marks)

● ◆ Network virtualization combines hardware appliances and specific

software for the creation and management of a virtual network.Network
virtualization can aggregate different physical networks into a single logical network
(external network virtualization) or provide network like functionality to an operating
system partition (internal network virtualization). The result of external network
virtualization is generally a virtual LAN (VLAN).
◆ ●A VLAN is an aggregation of hosts that communicate with each other as
though they were located under the same broadcasting domain. Internal network
virtualization is generally applied together with hardware and operating system-level
virtualization, in which the guests obtain a virtual network interface to communicate
with. • There are several options for implementing internal network virtualization:
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1. The guest can share the same network interface of the host and use Network
Address Translation (NAT) to access the network; The virtual machine manager
can emulate, and install on the host, an additional network device, together with
the driver.
2. The guest can have a private network only with the guest.

3. Write a short notes on Storage virtualization? [CO3,K1]

(Definition:2 marks,Concept explanation:11 marks)

• Storage virtualization is a system administration practice that allows decoupling the

physical organization of the hardware from its logical representation. Using this
technique, users do not have to be worried about the specific location of their data, which can
be identified using a logical path.

Storage virtualization allows us to harness a wide range of storage facilities and

represent them under a single logical file system.

There are different techniques for storage virtualization, one of the most popular
being network based virtualization by means of storage
area networks (SANS).

● ◆ SANS use a network accessible device through a large bandwidth

connection to provide storage facilities.

4. Explain in detail about Operating system level virtualization? [CO3,K4]

(Definition:2 marks,Concept explanation:11 marks)

Operating system level virtualization offers the opportunity to create

different andseparated execution environments for applications that are managed
concurrently.

● ◆ Differently from hardware virtualization, there is no virtual machine

manager or hypervisor and the virtualization is done within a single operating
system where the OS kernel allows for multiple isolated user space instances.
The kernel is also responsible for sharing the system resources among instances
and for limiting the impact of instances on each other.
A user space instance in general contains a proper view of the file system which
is completely isolated and separate IP addresses, software configurations and
access to devices
Operating systems supporting this type of virtualization are general purpose,
timeshared operating systems with the capability to provide stronger namespace
and resource isolation.
This virtualization technique can be considered an evolution of the chroot
mechanism in Unix systems.
The chroot operation changes the file system root directory for a process andsti
children to a specific directory.As a result, the process and its children cannot
have access to other portions of the file system than those accessible under the
new root directory.
Because Unix systems also expose devices as parts of the file system, by using
this method it is possible to completely isolate a set of processes.
Following the same principle, operating system level virtualization aims ot
provide separated and multiple execution containers for running applications.
This technique is an efficient solution for server consolidation scenarios in
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which multiple application servers share the same technology: operating system,
application server framework, and other components.
Examples of operating system-level virtualizations are FreeBSD Jails, IB
M
Logical Partition (LPAR), SolarisZones and Containers, Parallels Virtuozzo
Containers, OpenVZ, iCore Virtual Accounts, Free Virtual Private Server
(FreeVPS), and other

5. Explain in detail about application level virtualization? [CO3,K4]

(Definition:2 marks,Concept explanation:11 marks)
Application level virtualization is a technique allowing applications to be runni runtime
environments that do not natively support all the features required by such applications.
In this scenario, applications are not installed in the expected runtime
environment but are run as though they were.
In general, these techniques are mostly concerned with partial file systems,
libraries, and operating system component emulation. Such emulation is
performed by a thin layer called a program or an operating system component
that is in charge of executing the application.
Emulation can also be used to execute program binaries compiled for different
hardware architectures.
In this case, one of the following strategies can be implemented:
Interpretation: In this technique every source instruction is interpreted by an
emulator for executing native ISA instructions, leading to poor performance.
Interpretation has a minimal startup cost but a huge overhead, since each
instruction is emulated.
Binary translation: In this technique every source instruction is converted ot
native instructions with equivalent functions. After a block of instructions is
translated, it is cached and reused.
◆ ● Application virtualization is a good solution in the case of missing
libraries in the host operating system
In this case a replacement library can be linked with the application or library calls
can be remapped to existing functions available in the host system.
Another advantage is that in this case the virtual machine manager is much lighter
since it provides a partial emulation of the runtime environment compared to
hardware virtualization.

● ◆ Compared to programming level virtualization, which works across all

the applications developed for that virtual machine, application level virtualization
works for a specific environment.
◆ ● It supports all the applications that run on top of a specific environment.
One of the most popular solutions implementing application virtualization is Wine,
which is a software application allowing Unix-like operating systems to execute
programs written for the Microsoft

Windows platform. Wine features a software application acting as a container for the
guest application and a set of libraries, called Winelib, that developers can use to
compile applications to be ported on Unix systems. ◆● Wine takes its inspiration
from a similar product from Sun, WindowsApplication Binary Interface (WABI)
which implements the Win 16

API specifications on Solaris.

• A similar solution for the Mac OS X environment is CrossOver, which allows
running Windows applications directly on the Mac OS X operating system.
● ◆ VMware ThinApp is another product in this area, allows capturing the setup
of an installed application and packaging it into an executable image isolated
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hosting operating system.

6. Explain in detail about Virtual Clusters and Resource Management?

[CO3,K4]
(Definition:2 marks,Diagram:4 marks,Concept explanation:7 marks)

A physical cluster consists of physical servers interconnected by a physical network,

while a virtual cluster comprises virtual servers interconnected by a virtual network.

● ◆ Virtual clusters present design challenges such as live migration of

virtual
machines, memory and file migrations, and dynamic deployment of virtual clusters.

Virtual clusters are built using virtual machines installed across one or more physical
clusters, logically interconnected by a virtual network across several physical
networks.

Each virtual cluster is formed by physical machines or a virtual machine hosted by

multiple physical clusters, with distinct boundaries shown.
Virtual machines can run with different operating systems and are intended to
consolidate multiple functionalities on the same server, enhancing server utilization
and application flexibility.

They can also be replicated in multiple servers to promote distributed parallelism,

fault tolerance, and disaster recovery.

Virtual cluster sizes can grow or shrink dynamically, similar to overlay networks in
peer-to-peer networks.

Physical node failures may disable some virtual machines, but virtual machine
failures will not affect the host system

Figure 3.3 illustrates the concepts of virtual clusters

Each virtual cluster is formed with physical machines or a VM hosted by multiple

physical clusters.The virtual cluster boundaries are shown as distinct boundaries.
Virtual machines can run with different operating systems and are intended to
consolidate multiple functionalities on the same server, enhancing server utilization
and application flexibility.
They can also be replicated in multiple servers to promote distributed parallelism,
fault tolerance, and disaster recovery.Virtual cluster sizes can grow or shrink
dynamically, similar to overlay networks in peer-to-peer networks.Physical node
failures may disable some virtual machines, but virtual machine failures will not
affect the host system

Figure 3.3 illustrates the concepts of virtual clusters

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Each virtual cluster is formed with physical machines or a VM hosted by multiple

physical clusters.The virtual cluster boundaries are shown as distinct boundaries.
1. Fast Deployment and Effective Scheduling

The system should be capable of quick deployment, which involves creating and
distributing software stacks (including the OS, libraries, and applications) to physical
nodes within clusters, as well as rapidly
switching runtime environments between virtual clusters for different users.

When a user is finished using their system, the corresponding virtual cluster should be
quickly shut down or suspended to free up resources for other users.The concept of
"green computing" has gained attention recently, which focuses on reducing energy
costs by applying energy-efficient techniques across clusters of homogeneous
workstations and specific applications.Live migration of VMs allows workloads to be
transferred from one node to another, but designing migration strategies for green
computing without compromising cluster performance is a challenge.
Virtualization also enables load balancing of applications within a virtual cluster
using the load index and user login frequency.
This load balancing can be used to implement an automatic scale-up and scale-down
mechanism for the virtual cluster.

2. High-Performance Virtual Storage

To customize VMs, the template VM can be distributed to multiple physical hosts in

the cluster.The process of deploying a group of VMs onto a target cluster involves
four key steps: preparing the disk image, configuring the VMs, selecting the
destination nodes, and executing the VM deployment command on each host. Each
VM is configured with a name, disk image, network settings, as well as a designated
amount of CPU and memory, which is then recorded in a file.
Most of the configuration items use identical settings, while some, like UUID, VM
name, and IP address, are assigned with automatically calculated values.The primary
objective of VM deployment is to meet the VM requirements and balance the
workloads across the entire host network.

3. Live VM Migration Steps and Performance

Virtual clustering provides a flexible solution for building clusters consisting of both
physical and virtual machines.
It is widely used in various computing systems such as cloud platforms, high-
performance computing systems, and computational grids.
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Virtual clustering enables the rapid deployment of resources upon user demand or in
response to node failures.There are four different ways to manage virtual clusters,
including having the cluster manager reside on the guest or host systems, using
independent cluster managers, or an integrated cluster manager designed to
distinguish between virtualized and physical resources.

A VM can be in one of four states, including an inactive state, an active state, a

paused state, and a suspended state.
The live migration of VMs allows for VMs to be moved from one physical machine
to another.

In the event of a VM failure, another VM running with the same guest OS can replace
it on a different node. During migration, the VM state file is copied from the storage
area to the host machine

4. Migration of Memory, Files, and Network Resources

Since clusters have a high initial cost of ownership which includes space, power
conditioning, and cooling equipment
When one system migrates to another physical node, consider the following issues.

Memory Migration

File System Migration

Network Migration

4.1Memory Migration

One crucial aspect of VM migration is memory migration, which involves moving the
memory instance of a VM from one physical host to another.
The efficiency of this process depends on the characteristics of the
application/workloads supported by the guest OS. In today's systems, memory
migration can range from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes.
The Internet Suspend-Resume (ISR) technique takes advantage of temporal locality,
where memory states are likely to have significant overlap between the suspended and
resumed instances of a VM.The ISR technique represents each file in the file system
as a tree of sub files, with a copy existing in both the suspended and resumed VM
instances.
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By caching only the changed files, this approach minimizes transmission overhead.
However, the ISR technique is not suitable for situations where live machine
migration is necessary, as it results in high downtime compared to other techniques.

4.2 File System Migration

For a system to support VM migration, it must ensure that each VM has a consistent
and location-independent view of the file system that is available on all hosts.

One possible approach is to assign each VM with its own virtual disk and map the file
system to it.
However, due to the increasing capacity of disks, it's not feasible to transfer the entire
contents of a disk over a network during migration.

Another alternative is to implement a global file system that is accessible across all
machines, where a VM can be located without the need to copy files between
machines.

4.3 Network Migration

When a VM is migrated to a new physical host, it is important that any open network
connections are maintained without relying on forwarding mechanisms or support
from mobility or redirection mechanisms on the original host.

To ensure remote systems can locate and communicate with the migrated VM, it must
be assigned a virtual IP address that is known to other entities.
This virtual IP address can be different from the IP address of the host machine where
the VM is currently located.
Additionally, each VM can have its own virtual MAC address, and the VMM
maintains a mapping of these virtual IP and MAC addresses to their corresponding
VMs in an ARP table.

7.5 Dynamic Deployment of Virtual Clusters

The Cellular Disco virtual cluster was created at Stanford on a shared- memory
multiprocessor system, while the INRIA virtual cluster was built to evaluate the
performance of parallel algorithms.

At Duke University, COD was developed to enable dynamic resource allocation with
a virtual cluster management system, and at Purdue University, the VIOLIN cluster
was constructed to demonstrate the benefits of dynamic adaptation using multiple VM
clustering.