Virtualization is arguably the technology trend of year. As virtualization - or at least talk of it - spreads through the enterprise, the word hypervisor is popping up everywhere in conjunction with it. To understand what a hypervisor is, you first have to have a basic understanding of system virtualization.
What is Virtualization?
In plain and basic words, virtualization is used to improve IT throughput and costs by using physical resources as a pool from which virtual resources can be allocated. If that is still a bit too much to swallow, consider then, the simple scenario of partitioning a computer hard drive. A single physical hard drive is partitioned and it effectively creates two separate hard drives in terms of how it is seen. While you still have only a single physical hard drive in your system, this act of virtualization allows the computer system, devices and human users to work with that single hard drive as if it were two physical hard drives.
This year storage virtualization has been a hot topic. Storage virtualization is the amalgamation of multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage unit, which is somewhat of the opposite effect of partitioning a hard drive. There is also server virtualization, which is the partitioning a physical server into smaller virtual servers. Network virtualization uses network resources through a logical segmentation of a single physical network. And the list goes on to cover operating system virtualization and evenapplication virtualization.
System Virtualization: Hardware and Hypervisors
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System virtualization is a technology often used to consolidate systems, workloads and operating environments by using a single physical system to create multiple virtual systems. One type of system virtualization is done through hardware partitioning, which divides a single physical server into partitions — where each partition is able to run an operating system.
A Hypervisor -- also called Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) or virtualization manager -- is another technology at heart of system virtualization. A hypervisor provides the underpinnings for virtualization management, which includes policy-based automation, virtual hard disk, life cycle management, live migration and real-time resource allocation. It's the software program or part of the code in firmware that manages either multiple operating systems or multiple instances of the same operating system on a single computer system. The hypervisor's job is to manage the system's processor, memory and other resources to allocate what each operating system requires. Hypervisors provide the means to logically divide a single, physical server or blade, allowing multiple operating systems to run securely on the same CPU and increase the CPU utilization.
Where hardware partitioning allows for hardware consolidation, hypervisors allow for flexibility in how the virtual resources are defined and managed, making it a more-often used system consolidation solution.
Types of Hypervisors
IBM systems breaks hypervisors down into two different types:
Type 1 hypervisors
Type 1 hypervisors are those that run directly on the system hardware and offers a higher level of virtualization efficiency and security.
Figure shows one physical system with a type 1 hypervisor running directly on the system hardware, and three virtual systems using virtual resources provided by the hypervisor. [Image Source: IBM Systems Virtualization Paper (PDF)]
Type 2 hypervisors
Type 2 hypervisors are those that run on a host operating system that provides virtualization services, such as I/O device support and memory management. Type 2 hypervisors are used mainly on client systems where efficiency is less critical, and are also commonly used for systems where support for a broad range of I/O devices is needed and can be provided by the host operating system.
Figure shows one physical system with a type 2 hypervisor running on a host operating system and three virtual systems using the virtual resources provided by the hypervisor. [Image Source: IBM Systems Virtualization Paper (PDF)]
For more information on types of hypervisors, we recommend reading this IBM Whitepaper resource, "IBM Systems Virtualization".
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