Basics of virtual machine migration on heterogeneous architectures for self-optimizing mechatronic systems

Abstract

The combination of virtualization and heterogeneous multi-processor architectures supports the development of efficient platforms for self-optimizing mechatronic systems, which are characterized by varying resource requirements. Virtualization addresses dependability issues and adds runtime flexibility to provide an appropriate resource management. Real-time requirements have to be met and existing real-time virtualization solutions are characterized by a static mapping of virtual machines to processors and do not use the full potential of heterogeneous architectures. The sketched architecture applies migration and emulation to realize a dynamic assignment of virtual machines to processors. This work identifies the necessary conditions for migration and the degree of communication between hypervisor and operating system that is indispensable for migration decisions. System virtualization is an approach of coarse-grained system consolidation, for which reason implementation issues and possibilities to reduce the high overhead are discussed. The implementation of a real-time capable virtual machine migration requires paravirtualization, that is to say a modification of the guest operating systems. The need to modify the guest operating system is outweighed by the advantages in terms of flexibility of an explicit communication and the resulting cooperation of hypervisor and guest operating system.