Design and implementation of a virtual machine-based transparent computing system
Chen Chengcai · Journal of Tsinghua University(Science and Technology) · 2008
Current virtual machine technologies allow users to utilize applications on heterogeneous operating systems. However, hardware and software management of the virtual machine is complicated and difficult to use. This paper presents a virtual-machine-based transparent computing system which uses a virtualized device model in the service operating system (OS) to redirect device I/O requests in the guest OS over networks to be serviced by the server. As a result, heterogeneous operating systems can run unmodified on-demand in a transparent computing environment. As in the Transparent Computing paradigm, the method enables users to focus on the needed computing without consideration of the management or technical issues. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method were verified on a prototype system based on Intel VT and the full virtualization of XEN.