AVMM: Virtualize network client with a bare-metal and asymmetric partitioning approach

Abstract

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of AVMM, a symmetric partition-based bare-metal client virtualization approach that tries to achieve maximum near-native performance for end-users while supporting new out-of-OS mechanism for value-added services for network system administration. To achieve these goals, AVMM divides the underlying network client platform into two asymmetric partitions: user and service partitions. The user partition runs a commodity OS, which is assigned to most portions of the CPU and memory resources and a set of peripheral devices to retain the end-user experience. The service partition runs a specialized OS, which consumes only the essential resources for its tasks. By letting user OS possess the most part of resources and access some peripheral devices directly, the AVMM overhead is reduced greatly, improving the whole network system performance. We have implemented a preliminary network prototype that can supportWindows and Linux. Our experimental evaluation results show that AVMM has achieved its designed goals and provides a feasible and efficient approach for client virtualization.