Virtual Machine Introspection: Observation or Interference?

hardware, eliminating an abstraction layer and often improving efficiency as a result. Examples of type 1 systems include VMware ESX,3 Xen (www. xensource.com/xen/xen/nfamily/virtualpc/default. mspx), and Microsoft Hyper-V (http://technet2. microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/server manager/virtualization.mspx). In a type 2 system, the VMM uses an OS as an interface to the physical hardware. Type 2 systems include VMware Workstation, the QEMU open source process emulator (http:// bellard.org/qemu/), KVM (http://kvm.qumranet. com/kvmwiki), Parallels (www.parallels.com), and Virtual PC/Server (www.microsoft.com/windows/ products/wi). Type 2 systems rely on the underlying OS to provide hardware interaction and device drivers, and thus often have a wider range of physical hardware components to interact with. To illustrate how virtualization works, we'll examine a simplified event sequence that occurs when a process attempts to access a memory address in its 

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: IEEESP
• Authors: Kara L. Nance, Matt Bishop, Brian Hay
• Keywords: Hardware, IEEESP 2008, Physical Hardware, QEMU Open Source