Hypervisor

A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) is computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This contrasts with operating-system-level virtualization, where all instances (usually called containers) must share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux distributions with the same kernel. A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) is computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This contrasts with operating-system-level virtualization, where all instances (usually called containers) must share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux distributions with the same kernel. The term hypervisor is a variant of supervisor, a traditional term for the kernel of an operating system: the hypervisor is the supervisor of the supervisor, with hyper- used as a stronger variant of super-. The term dates to circa 1970; in the earlier CP/CMS (1967) system the term Control Program was used instead. In their 1974 article, Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures, Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg classified two types of hypervisor: The distinction between these two types is not always clear. For instance, Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and FreeBSD's bhyve are kernel modules that effectively convert the host operating system to a type-1 hypervisor. At the same time, since Linux distributions and FreeBSD are still general-purpose operating systems, with applications competing with each other for VM resources, KVM and bhyve can also be categorized as type-2 hypervisors. The first hypervisors providing full virtualization were the test tool SIMMON and IBM's one-off research CP-40 system, which began production use in January 1967, and became the first version of IBM's CP/CMS operating system. CP-40 ran on a S/360-40 that was modified at the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center to support dynamic address translation, a feature that enabled virtualization. Prior to this time, computer hardware had only been virtualized to the extent to allow multiple user applications to run concurrently, such as in CTSS and IBM M44/44X. With CP-40, the hardware's supervisor state was virtualized as well, allowing multiple operating systems to run concurrently in separate virtual machine contexts. Programmers soon implemented CP-40 (as CP-67) for the IBM System/360-67, the first production computer system capable of full virtualization. IBM first shipped this machine in 1966; it included page-translation-table hardware for virtual memory, and other techniques that allowed a full virtualization of all kernel tasks, including I/O and interrupt handling. (Note that its 'official' operating system, the ill-fated TSS/360, did not employ full virtualization.) Both CP-40 and CP-67 began production use in 1967. CP/CMS was available to IBM customers from 1968 to early 1970s, in source code form without support. CP/CMS formed part of IBM's attempt to build robust time-sharing systems for its mainframe computers. By running multiple operating systems concurrently, the hypervisor increased system robustness and stability: Even if one operating system crashed, the others would continue working without interruption. Indeed, this even allowed beta or experimental versions of operating systems‍—‌or even of new hardware‍—‌to be deployed and debugged, without jeopardizing the stable main production system, and without requiring costly additional development systems. IBM announced its System/370 series in 1970 without any virtualization features, but added virtual memory support in the August 1972 Advanced Function announcement. Virtualization has been featured in all successor systems (all modern-day IBM mainframes, such as the zSeries line, retain backward compatibility with the 1960s-era IBM S/360 line). The 1972 announcement also included VM/370, a reimplementation of CP/CMS for the S/370. Unlike CP/CMS, IBM provided support for this version (though it was still distributed in source code form for several releases). VM stands for Virtual Machine, emphasizing that all, and not just some, of the hardware interfaces are virtualized. Both VM and CP/CMS enjoyed early acceptance and rapid development by universities, corporate users, and time-sharing vendors, as well as within IBM. Users played an active role in ongoing development, anticipating trends seen in modern open source projects. However, in a series of disputed and bitter battles, time-sharing lost out to batch processing through IBM political infighting, and VM remained IBM's 'other' mainframe operating system for decades, losing to MVS. It enjoyed a resurgence of popularity and support from 2000 as the z/VM product, for example as the platform for Linux for zSeries. As mentioned above, the VM control program includes a hypervisor-call handler that intercepts DIAG ('Diagnose', opcode x'83') instructions used within a virtual machine. This provides fast-path non-virtualized execution of file-system access and other operations (DIAG is a model-dependent privileged instruction, not used in normal programming, and thus is not virtualized. It is therefore available for use as a signal to the 'host' operating system). When first implemented in CP/CMS release 3.1, this use of DIAG provided an operating system interface that was analogous to the System/360 Supervisor Call instruction (SVC), but that did not require altering or extending the system's virtualization of SVC.