I have to admit that I've been a bit remiss. IBM held an analyst briefing on the topic of open virtualization technology and KVM in the hopes of keeping the analyst community up to date. I was traveling to Ohio to speak at the Buckeye DAMA chapter meeting and wasn't able to comment on the event until now.
Before IBM could ramp up and discuss what it is doing to take part in the promotion of the use of the Linux Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM), it had to explain a number of different organizations; KVM, the Open Virtualization Alliance; and oVirt; and what they did.
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU (a fast X86 emulator).
Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.
The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as of 2.6.20. KVM is open source software.
What will the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) do?
Foster the adoption of KVM as an enterprise-ready open virtualization solution. This entails ecosystem, marketing and educational activities. We'll document and promote best practices for KVM adoption and showcase usage stories to illustrate successful KVM adoption. We'll also encourage the development of a third-party ecosystem around KVM, including ISVs. And we'll help educate the market on the capabilities and benefits of KVM.How do the activities of the OVA relate to the open source development of KVM?
The promotional activities of the Alliance are intended to complement the process and structures already in place in the open source community while also recognizing that software, technology roadmaps specification and development will continue to take place within those community processes.How will member companies benefit from the formation of the OVA?
The member companies are all part of the Linux® and virtualization ecosystems. Our businesses leverage open source solutions, so all will benefit from increased KVM adoption. Improving awareness of KVM as an enterprise-ready open-virtualization solution will also help users understand their options when adopting virtualization.
So, in summary, OVA is doing its best to build a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and professional services that rests upon the foundation of the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) that can be found as a standard part of Linux from version 2.6.20 on.
The oVirt Project is an open virtualization project for anyone that cares about Linux-based KVM virtualization. Providing a feature-rich server virtualization management system with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, including high availability, live migration, storage management, system scheduler, and more.
oVirt is an comprehensive ecosystem of projects delivering a complete integrated platform on a well defined release schedule. These are components designed and tested to work together.
In addition oVirt provides a crucial venue for user and developer cooperation, and is the first truly open and comprehensive data centre virtualization management initiative.
While this timeline was interesting, I noticed that VMware's appearance in 1998 and Xen's introduction in 2004 were not noted.
IBM pointed out that Windows systems are being placed in virtual machines at a far more rapid pace than Linux systems. It also pointed out that when Linux servers are being placed in virtual environments, a mix of hypervisors are being selected. This, the company points out, is an opportunity to intercept the market with KVM.
I believe that there is something else operating here besides the mix of availability hypervisors — culture.
When Windows NT first became available, it was soon learned that it was wise not to mix multiple workloads on a single physical system. Version mismatches, DLL conflicts, and other issues made it highly advisable to separate workloads to assure higher levels of availability and reliability. Even though Microsoft has made great strides and Windows is now quite able to support multiple workloads simultaneously, the Windows culture is to place each application and application components on different servers. The use of virtual machine software on Windows was an attempt to consolidate these workloads and reduce the cost of hardware.
Linux comes out of a different culture — UNIX. Linux was designed to mimic the capabilities of UNIX, an operating system with a long history of successfully supporting multiple workloads without problems. Users of Linux didn't often feel the need to add an additional layer of software to consolidate workloads. "That's a Windows problem," they would say.
Virtual machine software was used in a Linux environment to consolidate Linux and Windows workloads on a single system. It is now becoming more common to deploy workloads in virtual machines to increase levels of agility and increase system optimization.
IBM is also supporting KVM as a tier 1 virtualization technology. IBM System Director VMControl supports KVM, Tivoli system management solutions support KVM, and IBM Cloud Solutions (IBM SmartCloud Enterprise and IBM Research Compute Cloud) use KVM
IBM's System x family of X86-based systems have been designed to optimize the use of KVM-based virtual machines as well.
IBM then went on to present a number of client case studies showing how KVM is being used to address major customer requirements.
IBM, having placed itself in a leadership role in the X86 virtual machine software market, expects to gain benefits as standards emerge for APIs for management and virtual machine software extensions. These standards would tend to help IBM sustain and grow all of its platforms as the company adds these APIs and extensions to all of its platforms.
IBM would also be able to optimize its investment in management software, development software and both professional and cloud computing services as these standards are implemented by other hardware suppliers as well.