Virtual Machine Technology Research Articles

A concurrent dynamic analysis framework for multicore hardware

Software has spent the bounty of Moore's law by solving harder problems and exploiting abstractions, such as high-level languages, virtual machine technology, binary rewriting, and dynamic analysis. Abstractions make programmers more productive and programs more portable, but usually slow them down. Since Moore's law is now delivering multiple cores instead of faster processors, future systems must either bear a relatively higher cost for abstractions or use some cores to help tolerate abstraction costs. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel concurrent, configurable dynamic analysis framework that efficiently utilizes multicore cache architectures. It introduces Cache-friendly Asymmetric Buffering (CAB), a lock-free ring-buffer that implements efficient communication between application and analysis threads. We guide the design and implementation of our framework with a model of dynamic analysis overheads. The framework implements exhaustive and sampling event processing and is analysis-neutral. We evaluate the framework with five popular and diverse analyses, and show performance improvements even for lightweight, low-overhead analyses. Efficient inter-core communication is central to high performance parallel systems and we believe the CAB design gives insight into the subtleties and difficulties of attaining it for dynamic analysis and other parallel software.

HotWave

Developing tools for profiling, debugging, testing, and reverse engineering is error-prone, time-consuming, and therefore costly when using low-level techniques, such as bytecode instrumentation. As a solution to these problems, we promote tool development in Java using high-level aspect-oriented programming (AOP). We demonstrate that the use of aspects yields compact tools that are easy to develop and extend. As enabling technology, we rely on HotWave, a new tool for dynamic and comprehensive aspect weaving. HotWave reconciles compatibility with existing virtual machine and AOP technologies. It provides support for runtime adaptation of aspects and reweaving of previously loaded code, as well as the ability to weave aspects into all methods executing in a Java Virtual Machine, including methods in the standard Java class library. HotWave also features a new mechanism for efficiently passing data between advices that are woven into the same method. We demonstrate the benefits of HotWave's distinguishing features with two case studies in the area of profiling.

The Case for VM-Based Cloudlets in Mobile Computing

Mobile computing continuously evolve through the sustained effort of many researchers. It seamlessly augments users' cognitive abilities via compute-intensive capabilities such as speech recognition, natural language processing, etc. By thus empowering mobile users, we could transform many areas of human activity. This article discusses the technical obstacles to these transformations and proposes a new architecture for overcoming them. In this architecture, a mobile user exploits virtual machine (VM) technology to rapidly instantiate customized service software on a nearby cloudlet and then uses that service over a wireless LAN; the mobile device typically functions as a thin client with respect to the service. A cloudlet is a trusted, resource-rich computer or cluster of computers that's well-connected to the Internet and available for use by nearby mobile devices. Our strategy of leveraging transiently customized proximate infrastructure as a mobile device moves with its user through the physical world is called cloudlet-based, resource-rich, mobile computing. Crisp interactive response, which is essential for seamless augmentation of human cognition, is easily achieved in this architecture because of the cloudlet's physical proximity and one-hop network latency. Using a cloudlet also simplifies the challenge of meeting the peak bandwidth demand of multiple users interactively generating and receiving media such as high-definition video and high-resolution images. Rapid customization of infrastructure for diverse applications emerges as a critical requirement, and our results from a proof-of-concept prototype suggest that VM technology can indeed help meet this requirement.

INCF Japan-node: visiome and simulation platforms

Introduction The INCF Japan-node at RIKEN BSI coordinates activities of neuroinformatics research in Japan. Committees from selected research areas have developed their platforms (PFs) on the base platform system XooNIps http:// xoonips.sourceforge.jp/. Currently eight platforms are opened accessible in public http://www.neuroinf.jp/: Visiome PF, Brain-Machine Interface PF, Invertebrate Brain PF, Neuroimaging PF, Integrative Brain Research PF, Cerebellar Development Transcriptome Database, Cerebellum PF, Dynamic Brain PF. Simulation PF is under development. It is based on a virtual machine technology that provides for testing models and/or software on each platform, including models on ModelDB at SenseLab.

Server virtualization architecture and implementation

Virtual machine technology, or virtualization, is gaining momentum in the information technology community. While virtual machines are not a new concept, recent advances in hardware and software technology have brought virtualization to the forefront of IT management. Stability, cost savings, and manageability are among the reasons for the recent rise of virtualization. Virtual machine solutions can be classified by hardware, software, and operating system/containers. From its inception on the mainframe to distributed servers on x86, the virtual machine has matured and will play an increasing role in systems management.

Study on virtual machine’s live migration

Virtual machine technology is a good way to separate software and hardware in the same physical machine,and is beneficial to fault management,dynamic load balancing and online server maintenance.It is especially useful in optimizing the performance of data center and cluster.To compare the performance of stop and copy migration and live migration,as well as to compare the impact of different tasks on live migration,this paper migrated four kinds of virtual machines with different tasks in LAN,using XEN as a virtual machine monitor.

Scenario-based virtual network infrastructure management in research and educational testbeds with VNUML

Virtual machine technologies have evolved during the last 40 years from mainframe to commodity (x86) systems. Although these techniques are nowadays quite mature in data center environments (consolidation, service continuity, etc.), scenario-based virtual infrastructure management tools keep evolving in research and educational areas. In this work, one such tool is described, Virtual Network User Mode Linux (VNUML), which has been successfully used during the past few years to help researchers and educators to build testbeds in a wide range of innovative network environments (such as IPv6 IX design and third-generation networks). Such application cases are detailed in this paper, assessing the soundness and flexibility of the tool. However, in spite of these successful applications, several challenges remain to be solved in virtual scenario management (distributed management, decoupling from any particular virtualization technique, and alignment with industry standards), and the way they are being addressed as part of VNUML’s evolution is also discussed.

Security through Diversity: Leveraging Virtual Machine Technology

Biologists have long recognized the dangers of the lack of diversity or monocultures in biological systems. Recently, it has been noted that much of the fragility of our networked computing systems can be attributed to the lack of diversity or monoculture of our software systems. The problem is severe. Because it is virtually inevitable that software will ship with flaws, our software monoculture leaves systems open to large-scale attacks by knowledgeable adversaries. Inspired by the resilience of diverse biological systems, the authors developed the genesis software development toolchain. An innovative aspect of genesis is the use of an application-level virtual machine technology that enables the application of diversity transforms at any point in the software toolchain. Using Genesis, they authors demonstrated that diversity, when judiciously applied, is a practical and effective defense against two widely used types of attacks - return-to-libc and code injection.

Automated containment of rootkits attacks

Rootkit attacks are a serious threat to computer systems. Packaged with other malwares such as worms, viruses and spyware, rootkits pose a more potent threat than ever before by allowing malware to evade detection. In the absence of appropriate tools to counter such attacks, compromised machines stay undetected for extended periods of time. Leveraging virtual machine technology, we propose a solution for real-time automated detection and containment of rootkit attacks. We have developed a prototype using VMware Workstation to illustrate the solution. Our analysis and experimental results indicate that this approach can very successfully detect and contain the effects of a large percentage of rootkits found for Linux today. We also demonstrate with an example, how this approach is particularly effective against malwares that use rootkits to hide.

An overview of Virtual Machine (VM) technology and its implementation in I.T. student labs at Utah Valley State College

Businesses and industry are rapidly integrating Virtual Machine (VM) technology into their IT infrastructure to lower power, cooling, and space requirements in the data center. Properly configured VMs increase both uptime and security. VMs are also implemented on workstations for software testing and application isolation. Utilizing VMs in educational environments provides an inexpensive and easily replicated environment for student lab assignments and experimentation. This paper describes both desktop and server VMs, describes how they function, and compares some of the VMs available in the marketplace. It concludes with examples of how desktop VMs are utilized in student IT labs at Utah Valley State College to enhance learning experiences in courses teaching Operating Systems, Data Communications theory, Information Security, and Computer Forensics.

Introducing New Resource Management Policies Using a Virtual Machine Monitor

Integrating new resource management policies into operating systems (OSes) is an ongoing process. Despite innovative policy proposals being developed, it is unrealistic to widely deploy a new one because it is a difficult, costly and often an impractical endeavor to modify an existing operating system to integrate a new policy. To address this problem, we explore the possibility of using virtual machine technology to incorporate a new policy into an existing OS without the need to make any changes to it. This paper describes FoxyTechnique, which virtualizes physical devices differently from real ones and tricks a guest OS into producing behavior similar to a desired policy. FoxyTechnique has three advantages. First, it allows us to implement a new policy without the need to make any changes to OS kernels. Second, Foxy-based policies are expected to be portable across different operating systems because they are isolated from guest OSes by stable virtual hardware interfaces. Finally, Foxy-based policies sometimes outperform guest OS policies because they can measure performance indicators more accurately than guest OSes. To demonstrate the usefulness of FoxyTechnique, we conducted two case studies, FoxyVegas and FoxyIdle, on the Xen virtual machine monitor. FoxyVegas and FoxyIdle tricked the original Linux and successfully mimicked TCP Vegas and Idletime scheduling, respectively.

Virtual workspaces for scientific applications

Scientists often face the need for more computing power than is available locally, but are constrained by the fact that even if the required resources were available remotely, their complex software stack would not be easy to port to those resources. Many applications are dependency-rich and complex, making it hard to run them on anything but a dedicated platform. Worse, even if the applications do run on another system, the results they produce may not be consistent across different runs.As part of the Center for Enabling Distributed Petascale Science (CEDPS) project we have been developing the workspace service which allows authorized clients to dynamically provision execution environments, using virtual machine technology, on remote computers. Virtual machines provide an excellent implementation of a portable environment as they allow users to configure an environment and then deploy it on a variety of platforms. This paper describes a proof-of-concept of this strategy developed for the High-Energy and Nuclear Physics (HENP) applications such as STAR's. We are currently building on this work to enable production STAR runs in virtual machines.

Virtual machine support for zero‐loss Internet service recovery and upgrade

AbstractSoftware is critical for Internet service availability since an Internet service may become unavailable due to software faults or software maintenance. In this paper, we propose a framework to allow zero‐loss recovery and online maintenance for Internet services. The framework is based on the virtual machine (VM) technology and a connection migration technique called FT‐TCP. It can recover transient application/operating system faults and it allows fault recovery and online maintenance on a single host. The framework substantially enhances FT‐TCP so that it can be run efficiently in the VM environment. Specifically, we propose techniques to reduce the inter‐VM switches and communication. Moreover, we propose service‐specific optimizations to reduce the recovery time of FT‐TCP. Finally, the framework provides an interface for the service designers to implement more service‐specific optimizations. The framework was implemented by modifying an open source VM monitor, Xen, and the Linux kernel running on top of Xen. The effectiveness and efficiency of the framework were evaluated by running two Internet services, WWW proxy and FTP, on the proposed framework and measuring the impact on their performance. According to the experimental results, our approach causes only slight performance overhead (i.e. less than 4%) and memory overhead (i.e. less than 750 KB) for both the services. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

XEN virtual machine technology and its security analysis

This paper interprets the essence of XEN and hardware virtualization technology, which make the virtual machine technology become the focus of people’s attention again because of its impressive performance. The security challenges of XEN are mainly researched from the pointes of view: security bottleneck, security isolation and share, life-cycle, digital copyright protection, trusted virtual machine and managements, etc. These security problems significantly affect the security of the virtual machine system based on XEN. At the last, these security measures are put forward, which will be a useful instruction on enhancing XEN security in the future.

A virtual machining based training system for numerically controlled machining

AbstractThe development of numerically controlled (NC) machining training systems based‐on virtual machining technology is presented for supporting training of trainee to acquire the theoretical know‐how, practical skills, and the problem troubleshooting techniques on the usage of NC machines and NC programming. The architecture, underlying theoretical basis for the development of training system based‐on virtual machining is described. Several digital NC machining training systems had been developed and are practiced in the authors' university and in a professional training center. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 15: 64–72, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20097

Countering security threats in service-oriented on-demand grid computing using sandboxing and trusted computing techniques

In this paper, an analysis of security threats within service-oriented on-demand Grid computing environments is presented. The analysis is based on identifying three levels of trust relationships and three types of Grid applications in on-demand computing; the trust relationships involve interactions among resource providers, middleware producers, solution producers, and users. The paper presents solutions for addressing the threats inherent to these three increasingly demanding levels. The solutions involve applying sandbox-based approaches using virtual machine technology and jailing mechanisms to ensure trust for the first two levels of on-demand Grid computing, as well as Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) technology for the third level of on-demand Grid computing. A brief taxonomy of the presented solutions is introduced.

The Turning of the Wheel

The author traces the development of virtual machine technology from its origins in the 1960s.

Centrally-stored and delivered virtual machines in the networking/system administration lab

Virtual machine technology has presented an opportunity for the networking/system administration lab to serve multiple classes. The storage and delivery of virtual machine images has however presented a new problem for faculty and technical support staff. The authors have performed initial testing involving centralized verses distributed virtual machine image delivery in the networking/system administration and will provide details as to their results in this paper. The overriding goal is to provide mobility for students within the lab and virtual machine manageability for faculty and technical staff.

Towards seamless mobility on pervasive hardware

Preserving one’s uniquely customized computing environment as one moves to different locations is an enduring challenge in mobile computing. We examine why this capability is valued so highly, and what makes it so difficult to achieve for personal computing applications. We describe a new mechanism called Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) that overcomes many of the limitations of previous approaches to realizing this capability. ISR enables a hands-free approach to mobile computing that appears well suited to future pervasive computing environments in which commodity hardware may be widely deployed for transient use. We show that ISR can be implemented by layering virtual machine technology on distributed file system technology. We also report on measurements from a prototype that confirm that ISR is already usable today for some common usage scenarios.

Joeq: A virtual machine and compiler infrastructure

Joeq 1 1 Joeq (pronounced like the name “Joe” and the letter “Q”) means “advanced level” in Japanese. is a virtual machine and compiler infrastructure designed to facilitate research in virtual machine technologies such as Just-In-Time and Ahead-Of-Time compilation, advanced garbage collection techniques, distributed computation, sophisticated scheduling algorithms, and advanced run time techniques. Joeq is entirely implemented in Java, leading to reliability, portability, maintainability, and efficiency. It is also language independent, so code from any supported language can be seamlessly compiled, linked, and executed — all dynamically. Each component of the virtual machine is written to be independent with a general but well-defined interface, making it easy to experiment with new ideas. Joeq is released as open source software, and is being used as a framework by researchers all over the world on topics ranging from automatic distributed virtual machines to whole-program pointer analysis.