Challenges and Obstacles in x86 Virtualization

In this article we are going to explore some of the problems of the x86 Virtualization technologies.

• Increasing IT Distribution Costs

As computer environments become more complexly, the level of specialised education and training has increased experience required by infrastructure management staff; as well as the associated costs. Organisations spend disproportionate time and resources in manual work related to maintenance of the servers, and therefore it is necessary to more staff to perform these tasks.

• Inadequate Migration and Disaster Protection

Organisations are increasingly affected by the interruption of (downtime) critical service applications and the inability to critical end-users’ access to workstations. The threat attacks on security, the threat of natural disasters, epidemics and terrorism has increased the importance of planning to maintain the smooth functioning of the organisation (business continuity planning) for both workstations and for VPS servers.

• Intense Maintenance of Final Work Stand

The management and insurance of the agencies’ workstations presents numerous challenges. Controlling an environment with scattered workstations (desktops) and the enforcement of a policy management, access and security without weakening the ability to users to work efficiently is complex and Costly. Numerous fixes {patches) and upgrades must be apply continuously to desktop environments to eliminate vulnerabilities in safety.

Problems in the past

Unlike mainframes, x86 systems were not designed to fully support Virtualization and the IT society had overcome powerful challenges to create virtual machines x86-based computers.

The basic function of most Central Units Processing (CPUs), in both mainframes and PCs, is to perform a sequence of stored instructions {e.g., a package of software). On x86 processors, there are 17 specific instructions that cause problems when they become ideal {virtualize), causing the operating system to display a warning, shut down the application, or just collapse.

As a result, these 17 directives constituted a major obstacle to the initial implementation of the Virtualization on x86 computers. For the handling of problematic instructions in the architecture of the x86 computers, Virtualization software manufacturers developed an adaptation technique, which “traps” these instructions when their creation and converts them into secure instructions that can be ideas, while allowing all other directives to be carried out without any intervention.

The result is a high virtual machine performance that is harmoniously combined with the hardware of the server (host) and maintains full software compatibility.