Chariot: A High Compatible Architecture to Improve Virtual Machine Reliability

Abstract

Currently, the virtualization technologies can integrate multiple operating systems into a high-performance server to maximize the utilization of the server's resources. This server can serves more users. However, the driver faults in virtual machine still seriously affect the reliability of the virtual machine, and even affect the reliability of the entire server. This paper presents Chariot, a high compatible architecture to improve virtual machine reliability. If the driver is loaded by the Chariot's isolation loading mechanism, its memory usage will be timely monitored by Chariot, and its access control table will be established. Through setting the corresponding shadow page table of the whole kernel space of the virtual machine, Chariot captures the write operations of the isolated driver. Combing the access control table, Chariot can determine the correctness of these writing operations. Chariot has an effective errors isolation capability, and is easy to develop. Also Chariot has an excellent compatibility and needs not to modify the drivers and the operation system in the virtual machine. Experimental results show that Chariot can effectively isolate the driver faults, and improve the reliability of operation system in the virtual machine environments.