The goal of the master thesis is the paravirtualization of HelenOS operating system for Xen hypervisor on IA-32. The result of the thesis is a prototype implementation which allows to run HelenOS as a PV guest under Xen hypervisor. The thesis analyses the Xen hypervisor interface with respect to the paravirtualized operating system running under it, the relevant parts of HelenOS kernel and changes in them forced by the paravirtualization.

The aim of the master thesis is to create a prototype implementation of the interface of the Xen hypervisor within the HelenOS operating system. The target architecture of this prototype implementation is IA-32. The result of the thesis is a port of HelenOS which can be uses to run the selected para-virtualized domain. The thesis contains a brief introduction to the methods of virtualization and describes the main differences between them. Thesis also describes the parts of the architecture of the Xen hypervisor and the HelenOS operating system, which will be modified in the prototype implementation. The most important part of this thesis is to select of the t testing domain as well as analyze and describe all changes, which were required for the do-main's operation.

CONTEXT. Full-system simulators provide benefits to developers in terms of a more rapid development cycle; since development may begin prior to that of next-generation hardware being available. However, there is a distinct lack of graphics virtualization in industry-grade virtual platforms, leading to performance issues that may obfuscate the benefits virtual platforms otherwise have over execution on actual hardware. OBJECTIVES. This dissertation concerns the implementation of graphics acceleration by the means of paravirtualizing OpenGL ES 2.0 in the Simics full-system simulator. Furthermore, this study illustrates the benefits and drawbacks of paravirtualized methodology, in addition to performance analysis and comparison with the Android emulator; which likewise utilize paravirtualization to accelerate simulated graphics. METHODS. In this study, we propose a solution for paravirtualized graphics using Magic Instructions; the implementation of which is subsequently described. Additionally, three benchmarks are devised to stress key points in the developed solution; comprising areas such as inter-system communication latency and bandwidth. Additionally, the solution is evaluated based on computationally intensive applications. RESULTS. For the purpose of this study, elapsed frame times for respective benchmarks are collected and compared with four platforms; i.e. the hardware accelerated Host machine, the paravirtualized Android emulator, the software rasterized Simics- and the paravirtualized Simics platforms. CONCLUSIONS. This thesis establishes paravirtualization as a feasible method to achieve accelerated graphics in virtual platforms. The study shows graphics acceleration of up to 34 times of that of its software rasterized counterparts. Furthermore, the study establishes magic instructions as the primary bottleneck of communication latency in the devised solution. Classification: E.1.1 [Software infrastructure]: Virtual machines; K.6.4 [Graphics systems and interfaces]: Graphics processors; N.1.0 [Companies]: Intel Corporation; Keywords: Paravirtualization; Simics; / Arkitekturella simulatorer förser utvecklare med medel till snabbare utvecklingscykler genom att tillåta utveckling av mjukvara för nya plattformar innan dessa finns tillgängliga. Dessvärre finns det få lösningar för GPU-accelerering i moderna virtuella plattformar; vilket leder till prestandaproblem som kan hämma de fördelar som virtuella plattformar har över exekvering på hårdvara. Denna uppsats angår implementering av grafikaccelerering genom paravirtualisering av OpenGL ES 2.0 i systemsimulatorn Simics. Studien sammanfattar fördelar och nackdelar av paravirtualiserade metoder, med hänsyn till prestandaanalys och jämförelse med Android-emulatorn; som också nyttjar paravirtualisering för att accelerera simulerad grafik. Vi föreslår grafikaccelering genom paravirtualisering m.h.a. magiska instruktioner; vars implementation sammanfattas i uppsatsen. Vidare presenteras tre utvärderingsprov vars syfte är att påfresta nyckelpunkter i den paravirtualiserade lösningen, så som systemlatens och bandbredd i kommunikation mellan simulering och den verkliga världen. Lösningen evalueras även baserat på ett prestandakrävande utvärderingstest. För experimentet, som presenteras i denna uppsats, samlas uppdateringsfrekvens för de grafiska utvärderingstesten och jämförs med exekvering på fyra olika plattformar. Dessa plattformar omfattar ett hårdvaruaccelerat referens-system, paravirtualiserad simulering m.h.a. Android-emulator, mjukvarurastrerad Simics-simulering, och paravirtualiserad Simics-simulering. Uppsatsen fastställer paravirtualisering som en god metod för att uppnå grafikaccelering i virtuella plattformar. Studien påvisar prestandaförbättringar motsvarande 34 gånger jämförelsevis med dess mjukvarurastrerade motpart. Vidare presenterar uppsatsen magiska instruktioner som den primära flaskhalsen i den utvecklade lösningen. / <p>OFFICE eric.nilsson@intel.com +46 8 690 0734 HOME EricNNilsson@gmail.com +46 73 656 4535</p>

Malicious software (malware) attacks are an ever-increasing cyber-security problem. One reason for this trend is the widespread adoption of packing technology as a way to mask the semantics of binary instructions, hiding them from detection. Packing is so successful that it is estimated 70-80% of malicious programs utilize it to avoid detection [1]. The popularity of virtualization provides new tools for dealing with this threat. Researchers have successfully used facilities provided by virtualization to develop new ways of detecting and analyzing packed and encrypted malware. Methods like these typically require changes to the virtualization platform, making them difficult to deploy as well as hard to reuse. This thesis presents Maitland, a proof-of-concept unpacking system which achieves similar functionality to existing research, using paravirtualization extensions instead of requiring changes to the hypervisor. During our experiments, Maitland successfully exposed instructions in software that was packed by the UPX and gzexe packers. Maitland’s avoidance of changes to the hypervisor means it is better suited for quick deployment in a cloud environment. / Graduate

In this thesis we present pvFPGA, the first system design solution for virtualizing an FPGA - based hardware accelerator on the x86 platform. The accelerator design on the FPGA can be used for accelerating various applications, regardless of the application computation latencies. Our design adopts the Xen virtual machine monitor (VMM) to build a paravirtualized environment, and a Xilinx Virtex - 6 as an FPGA accelerator. The accelerator communicates with the x86 server via PCI Express (PCIe). In comparison to the current GPU virtualization solutions, which primarily intercept and redirect API calls to the hosted or privileged domain’s user space, pvFPGA virtualizes an FPGA accelerator directly at the lower device driver layer. This gives rise to higher efficiency and lower overhead. In pvFPGA, each unprivileged domain allocates a shared data pool for both user - kernel and inter-domain data transfer. In addition, we propose the coprovisor, a new component that enables multiple domains to simultaneously access an FPGA accelerator. The experimental results have shown that 1) pvFPGA achieves close-to-zero overhead compared to accessing the FPGA accelerator without the VMM layer, 2) the FPGA accelerator is successfully shared by multiple domains, 3) distributing different maximum data transfer bandwidths to different domains can be achieved by regulating the size of the shared data pool at the split driver loading time, 4) request turnaround time is improved through DMA (Direct Memory Access) context switches implemented by the coprovisor.

The goal of the thesis is to examine and assess actual portfolio of products on the market for server visualization and to compare performance of individual products with performance of the physical machine. The research and the assessment of the actual portfolio will be carried out with the focus on current trends in the area of server virtualization, reasons for realization, and important aspects for their successful implementation. The comparison will be carried out in areas of supported platforms, hardware emulation spectra, hardware limitations, licensing and prices. Further it will be performed comparison in the form of benchmark performance in areas of CPU, RAM, hard-drive throughput, and network throughput of most commonly used products for server virtualization.

Virtualization is the foundation on which cloud services build their business. It supports the infrastructure for the largest companies around the globe and is a key component for scaling software for the ever-growing technology industry. If companies decide to use virtualization as part of their infrastructure it is important for them to quickly and reliably have a way to choose a virtualization technology and tweak the performance of that technology to fit their intended usage. Unfortunately, while many papers exist discussing and testing the performance of various virtualization systems, most of these performance tests do not take into account components that can be configured to improve performance for certain scenarios. This study provides a comparison of how three hypervisors (VMWare vSphere, Citrix XenServer, and KVM) perform under different sets of configurations at this point and which system workloads would be ideal for these configurations. This study also provides a means in which to compare different configurations with each other so that implementers of these technologies have a way in which to make informed decisions on which components should be enabled for their current or future systems.

Virtualisering av datorer rent generellt innebär att man delar upp hela eller delar av enmaskinkonfiguration i flera exekveringsmiljöer. Det är inte bara datorn i sig som kanvirtualiseras utan även delar av det, såsom minnen, lagring och nätverk. Virtualiseringanvänds ofta för att kunna nyttja systemets resurser mer effektivt. En hypervisorfungerar som ett lager mellan operativsystemet och den underliggande hårdvaran. Meden hypervisor har virtuella maskiner sitt egna operativsystems kärna. En annan tekniksom bortser från detta mellanlager kallas zoner. Zoner är en naturlig del avoperativsystemet och alla instanser delar på samma kärna, vilket inte ger någon extraoverhead. Problemet är att hypervisorn är en resurskrävande teknik. Genom att användazoner kan detta problem undkommas genom att ta bort hypervisorlagret och istället köramed instanser som kommunicerar direkt med operativsystemets kärna. Detta ärteoretiskt grundande och ingen tidigare forskning har utförts, därmed påkallades dennautredning. För att belysa problemet använde vi oss av Apache som webbserver.Verktyget Httperf användes för att kunna utföra belastningstester mot webbservern.Genom att göra detta kunde vi identifiera att den virtualiserade servern presterade sämreän en fysisk server (referensmaskin). Även att den nyare tekniken zoner bidrar till lägreoverhead, vilket gör att systemet presterar bättre än med den traditionella hypervisorn.För att styrka vår teori utfördes två tester. Det första testet bestod utav en virtualiseradserver, andra testet bestod av tre virtuella servrar. Anledningen var att se hur de olikateknikerna presterade vid olika scenarion. Det visade sig i båda fallen att zonerpresterade bättre och att det inte tappade lika mycket i prestanda i förhållande tillreferensmaskinerna. / Virtualization of computers in general means that the whole or parts of a machineconfiguration is split in multiple execution enviornments. It is not just the computeritself that can be virtualized, but also the resources such as memory, storage andnetworking. Virtualization is often used to utilize system resources more efficient. Ahypervisor acts as a layer between the operating system and the underlying hardware.With a hypervisor a virtual machine has its own operating system kernel. Anothertechnique that doesn't use this middle layer is called zones. Zones are a natural part ofthe operating system and all instances share the same core, this does not provide anyadditional overhead. The problem with hypervisors is that it is a rescource-demandingtechnique. The advantage with zones is that you should be able to avoid the problem byremoving the hypervisor layer and instead run instances that communicate directly tothe operating system kernel. This is just a theoretical foundation. No previous researchhas been done, which result in this investigation. To illustrate the problem we usedApache as a web server. Httperf will be used as a tool to benchmark the web server. Bydoing this we were able to identify that the virtualized server did not perform quite aswell as a physical server. Also that the new technique (zones) did contribute with loweroverhead, making the system perform better than the traditional hypervisor. In order toprove our theory two tests were performed. The first test consisted of one virtual serverand the other test consisted of three virtual servers. The reason behind this was to seehow the different techniques performed in different scenarios. In both cases we foundthat zones performed better and did not drop as much performance in relation to ourreference machines.