Video indexed VM continuous checkpoints: time travel support for virtual 3d graphics applications

Abstract

Running 3D applications such as computer games over virtualized platform is gaining popularity among virtual machine users. This paper presents a novel continuous virtual machine checkpointing and replay system that combines virtual 3D graphics support, continuous and high frequency virtual machine checkpointing, and virtual machine time travel. The system consists of, a video capture subsystem that constantly captures visual-audio output of a live 3D application running as a hypervisor guest, a checkpointing subsystem that incrementally and periodically preserves states of the running guest at fine granularity in real time, and a video and virtual machine replay subsystem that supports time travel of checkpointed guest to any prior point corresponding to the image frame in the captured video sequence. The system binds captured live video with continuous virtual machine checkpoints. As a result, the system offers novel video based interactive experiences where checkpointed 3D applications such as computer games can be restarted and continued from any frame point of a live video clip. A prototype of the described system was developed using Xen hypervisor and some research findings are reported in this paper.