Xen: a Paravirtualization Tool

Modern computers are sufficiently powerful to use virtualization to present the illusion of many smaller virtual machines (VMs), each running a separate operating system instance. Successful partitioning of a machine to support the concurrent execution of multiple operating systems poses several challenges. Firstly, virtual machines must be isolated from one another. Secondly, it is necessary to support a variety of different operating systems to accommodate the heterogeneity of popular applications. Thirdly, the performance overhead introduced by virtualization should be minimal. Xen™ is a virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation.

Aim of the seminar is to introduce Xen™ and its functionalities. The focus will be mainly set on the advantages and disadvantages of Xen tool, together with some interesting applications. There will finally be a brief explanation on how to install Xen™ with a Linux Kernel running on it.