Whitepaper: Sun xVM Server Hardware Virtualization Product Architecture

Sun recently published a very interesting 120-pages whitepaper which introduces to hardware virtualization and describes in details the architecture design of its existing and upcoming hypervisors: LDoms (for SPARC systems) and xVM Server (for x86 and x64 systems). It also includes an analysis of VMware ESX Server and a comparison with its architecture.

…”Virtual Machine Monitor Basics” on page 9 discusses the core of hardware virtualization, the VMM, as well as requirements for the VMM and several types of VMM implementations.
“The x86 Processor Architecture” on page 21 describes features of the x86 processor architecture that are pertinent to virtualization.
“SPARC Processor Architecture” on page 29 describes features of the SPARC processor that affect virtualization implementations….
“Sun xVM Server” on page 39 discusses a paravirtualized Solaris OS that is based on an open source VMM implementation for x86[6] processors and is planned for inclusion in a future Solaris release.
“Sun xVM Server with Hardware VM (HVM)” on page 63 continues the discussion of Sun xVM Server for the x86 processors that support hardware virtual machines: Intel-VT and AMD-V.
“Logical Domains” on page 79 discusses Logical Domains (LDoms), supported on Sun servers that utilize UltraSPARC T1 or T2 processors, and describes Solaris OS support for this feature.
“VMware” on page 97 discusses the VMware implementation for the VMM…

xVM Server is expected in beta before the end of this month, so this is recommended reading.

Read it here.