A feather-weight virtual machine for windows applications

Many fault-tolerant and intrusion-tolerant systems require the ability to execute unsafe programs in a realistic environment without leaving permanent damages. Virtual machine technology meets this requirement perfectly because it provides an execution environment that is both realistic and isolated. In this paper, we introduce an OS level virtual machine architecture for Windows applications called Feather-weight Virtual Machine (FVM), under which virtual machines share as many resources of the host machine as possible while still isolated from one another and from the host machine. The key technique behind FVM is namespace virtualization, which isolates virtual machines by renaming resources at the OS system call interface. Through a copy-on-write scheme, FVM allows multiple virtual machines to physically share resources but logically isolate their resources from each other. A main technical challenge in FVM is how to achieve strong isolation among different virtual machines and the...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: VEE
• Authors: Yang Yu, Fanglu Guo, Susanta Nanda, Lap-Chung Lam, Tzi-cker Chiueh
• Keywords: Host Machine, VEE 2006, Virtual Machine, Virtual Machine Technology, Virtualization