General Reading on Virtualisation

Everything which doesn't fit into the other sections.
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TerryE
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General Reading on Virtualisation

Post by TerryE »

It struck me that we don't seem to have a general reading list for users to get a general introduction to Virtualization Technologies and Techniques. Whilst the internet seems to be full of general waffle and sales-type bumf good reference material is hard to find. So what I have done here is to include some of the papers that I have found useful. This list tends to rotate over time, but I hope that if you are interested in the subject that you find this list useful. If you want to vote to "evict" one, to suggest your own favourites or just to comment then please use Discuss General Reading on Virtualisation.

The Grand Daddy of Them All

For those of you that think that Virtualization is a hot new technology, here is a reminder that it actually pre-dates the 8086! VirtualBox Documents

I am sorry to say that the VBox team produce some excellent software, but when it comes to selling its strengths they are strangely modest: Wikipedia

And of course you can get lost in Wikipedia for an hour or so chaising around its articles. Some are quite good, but they do tend to suffer being over-tweaked by too many authors. AnandTech Whitepapers

AnandTech is a niche online magazine / site but old Shanti publishes some excellent technology papers including these intros to virtualisation technology. VBox Supporters ReferencesCambridge University Xen Papers

These are the papers from my alma mater on its initial development of Xen and which explain well the whole concept of paravirtualization which this Cambridge research team really pioneered. VMware Papers

As well as all of their polished product material, VMware to their credit also publish some excellent papers on how their product works. Since the VBox development is completely separately some of the approaches here are different to VBox, but there is also a lot of 'convergent evolution'. Microsoft Papers

The MS papers tend to be high on marketing content and low on data but here is one that some hackers will find useful: Intel Papers

I have picked out the Initial Intel specification on their Hardware Virtualization interface. AMD Papers

AMD have now withdrawn their equivalent Pacifa specification and you can no longer find it on the Internet. However its content has now been merged into their x86-64bit Architectures Documents. Again, if you want to vote to "evict" one, to suggest your own favourites or just to comment then please use Discuss General Reading on Virtualisation.

Terry
Last edited by TerryE on 7. Feb 2009, 01:55, edited 3 times in total.
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TerryE
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Post by TerryE »

Change Log:

14 Aug 2008 Added links to Technologov's paper and Stefan's Howto
16 Aug 2008 Added reference to VMware "Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server" paper
20 Aug 2008 Added reference to Microsoft VHD Format Specification
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Technologov
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Re: General Reading on Virtualisation

Post by Technologov »

The future of Enterprise Virtual Networks:

some slides on EVB (VEPA) and the current draft protocol proposal for 802.1Qbg (i.e. EVB).

Architecture view:
http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/d ... 10-v17.pdf

ETTP definition:
http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/d ... 310-v0.pdf

VDP definititon (contains actual VDP TLVs):
http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/d ... 310v00.pdf

Draft Standard[1]:
http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/d ... 310-v0.pdf

Also: http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/d ... 0410v1.pdf

And what VMware are trying to make:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux ... /4/4565952

Xen papers about PCI passthrough, Intel VT-d and AMD IOMMU:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo

-Technologov
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