Virtual machines and their applications
CSE 598C
Spring 2006

Course description

A virtual machine monitor (VMM) is a software layer that virtualizes the resources of a physical server and supports the of execution of multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each VM runs a separate operating system within it. The VMM enables server resources, such as CPU, memory, disk, and neetwork bandwidth to be partitioned among the resident VMs. VMs have been around for several decades and there has been lots of interesting research in this area, particularly during the last few years. In this course we will read and understand this research on VMs and the numerous uses of VMs such as shared hosting, application migration, sandboxing collocated applications etc. The syllabus will be based on research papers, some on the very first VMMs and the rest on the latest VMMs (such as Xen, VMware) and the many innovative ways that researchers are envisioning to use this exciting systems technology.