Virtual Systems and
Services
Venders of Virtualization
Venders of Virtualization
• Vmware
• Microsoft
• Red Hat
• Citrix
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• IBM
Vmware
• Vmware is an American cloud computing and virtualization
technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize
the x86 architecture.
Techniques of Vmware
• VMotion
• Storage VMotion
• High Availability
• Memory Reclamation
Vmotion
• VMotion allows you to quickly move an
entire running virtual machine from one
host to another without any downtime or
interruption to the virtual machine This is
also known as a "hot" or "live" migration.
Vmotion
• The entire state of a virtual machine is encapsulated and the VMFS file system
allows both the source and the target ESX host to access the virtual machine files
concurrently. The active memory and precise execution state of a virtual machine
can then be rapidly transmitted over a high speed network. The virtual machine
retains its network identity and connections, ensuring a seamless migration
process.
Storage Vmotion
• Storage VMotion is a new feature introduced in ESX 3.5, it allows you to
migrate a running virtual machine and its disk files from one datastore to
another on the same ESX host.
Storage Vmotion
• The difference between VMotion and Storage VMotion is that VMotion simply moves
a virtual machine from one ESX host to another but keeps the storage location of the
VM the same, Storage VMotion on the other hand changes the storage location of
the virtual machine while it is running and moves it to another datastore on the
same ESX host. The virtual machine can be moved to any datastore on the ESX host
which includes local and shared storage.
High Availability (HA)
• Continuously monitors all hosts in a cluster and restarts virtual machines affected
by a host failure on other hosts.
• Can also monitor guest OS's for a failure via a heartbeat and restart them on the
same host in case of a failure Continuously monitors and chooses the optimal
physical servers within a resource pool on which to restart virtual machines (if
used in conjunction with DRS).
Memory Reclamation
• Memory reclamation in VMware is a set of techniques used by VMware's
hypervisor (ESXi) to efficiently manage and reclaim memory in virtualized
environments. This is especially important when multiple virtual machines (VMs)
are running on a single physical host, as it helps prevent memory shortages and
improves resource utilization. VMware ESXi uses several memory reclamation
techniques, including:
Transparent Page Sharing (TPS)
Ballooning
Memory
Reclamation(Techniques)
Transparent Page Sharing (TPS)
• How it works: TPS identifies identical memory pages across VMs and consolidates
them into a single physical memory page. Each VM still believes it has its own
page, but under the hood, they share a single copy.
• Benefit: Reduces memory usage by allowing multiple VMs to share memory,
especially effective in environments with similar OS or applications.
• Note: TPS was more aggressively used in earlier versions, but security concerns
led VMware to reduce its default usage.
Memory
Reclamation(Techniques)
Ballooning
• How it works: VMware Tools includes a balloon driver in each VM. When the ESXi
host is low on memory, it instructs the balloon driver to "inflate," consuming
memory inside the VM. This forces the VM’s operating system to release memory
it considers less critical, which ESXi can then reclaim for other VMs.
• Benefit: Allows for efficient memory management without the need to swap
memory to disk immediately.
• Note: Ballooning is used before swapping to reduce the impact on performance.
