research-article

SymCall: symbiotic virtualization through VMM-to-guest upcalls

Authors:

Peter DindaAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 46, Issue 7

Pages 193 - 204

https://doi.org/10.1145/2007477.1952707

Published: 09 March 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Symbiotic virtualization is a new approach to system virtualization in which a guest OS targets the native hardware interface as in full system virtualization, but also optionally exposes a software interface that can be used by a VMM, if present, to increase performance and functionality. Neither the VMM nor the OS needs to support the symbiotic virtualization interface to function together, but if both do, both benefit. We describe the design and implementation of the SymCall symbiotic virtualization interface in our publicly available Palacios VMM for modern x86 machines. SymCall makes it possible for Palacios to make clean synchronous upcalls into a symbiotic guest, much like system calls. One use of symcalls is to allow synchronous collection of semantically rich guest data during exit handling in order to enable new VMM features. We describe the implementation of SwapBypass, a VMM service based on SymCall that reconsiders swap decisions made by a symbiotic Linux guest. Finally, we present a detailed performance evaluation of both SwapBypass and SymCall.

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Cited By

Zhang QLiu LPu CCao WSahin S(2018)Efficient Shared Memory Orchestration towards Demand Driven Memory Slicing2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS.2018.00121(1212-1223)Online publication date: Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2018.00121
Zhang QLiu LSu GIyengar A(2017)MemFlex: A Shared Memory Swapper for High Performance VM ExecutionIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2017.268685066:9(1645-1652)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2017.2686850
Zhang PLi XChu RWang H(2015)HybridSwap: A scalable and synthetic framework for guest swapping on virtualization platform2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM)10.1109/INFOCOM.2015.7218457(864-872)Online publication date: Apr-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM.2015.7218457
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Index Terms

SymCall: symbiotic virtualization through VMM-to-guest upcalls
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 46, Issue 7

VEE '11

July 2011

231 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2007477

Issue’s Table of Contents

VEE '11: Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS international conference on Virtual execution environments
March 2011
250 pages
ISBN:9781450306874
DOI:10.1145/1952682
General Chair:
Erez Petrank
The Technion, Israel
,
Program Chair:
Doug Lea
SUNY Oswego, USA

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 March 2011

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 46, Issue 7

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Cited By

Zhang QLiu LPu CCao WSahin S(2018)Efficient Shared Memory Orchestration towards Demand Driven Memory Slicing2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS.2018.00121(1212-1223)Online publication date: Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2018.00121
Zhang QLiu LSu GIyengar A(2017)MemFlex: A Shared Memory Swapper for High Performance VM ExecutionIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2017.268685066:9(1645-1652)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2017.2686850
Zhang PLi XChu RWang H(2015)HybridSwap: A scalable and synthetic framework for guest swapping on virtualization platform2015 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM)10.1109/INFOCOM.2015.7218457(864-872)Online publication date: Apr-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM.2015.7218457
Cheng YLi QYu MDing XShen Q(2015)SuperCall: A Secure Interface for Isolated Execution Environment to Dynamically Use External ServicesSecurity and Privacy in Communication Networks10.1007/978-3-319-28865-9_11(193-211)Online publication date: 2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28865-9_11
Wang YTian XXu JChen SYang H(2012)Intel SYSRET Privilege Escalation Vulnerability AnalysisNetwork Computing and Information Security10.1007/978-3-642-35211-9_5(30-37)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35211-9_5
Xuan PLuo FGe RSrimani P(2017)Dynamic Management of In-memory Storage for Efficiently Integrating Compute- and Data-intensive Computing on HPC SystemsProceedings of the 17th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing10.1109/CCGRID.2017.66(549-558)Online publication date: 14-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CCGRID.2017.66
AKIYAMA SHIROFUCHI TTAKANO RHONIDEN S(2016)Fast Live Migration for IO-Intensive VMs with Parallel and Adaptive Transfer of Page Cache via SANIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2016PAP0021E99.D:12(3024-3034)Online publication date: 2016
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2016PAP0021
Li XZhang PChu RWang H(2016)Optimizing guest swapping using elastic and transparent memory provisioning on virtualization platformFrontiers of Computer Science: Selected Publications from Chinese Universities10.1007/s11704-016-5217-z10:5(908-924)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11704-016-5217-z
Liu HJin HLiao XDeng WHe BXu C(2015)Hotplug or Ballooning: A Comparative Study on Dynamic Memory Management Techniques for Virtual MachinesIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2014.232091526:5(1350-1363)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2014.2320915
Gauhar Eram Shaikh Shrawankar U(2015)Dynamic memory allocation technique for virtual machines2015 IEEE International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Technologies (ICECCT)10.1109/ICECCT.2015.7226091(1-6)Online publication date: Mar-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECCT.2015.7226091
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