Intel Virtualization Technology

Virtualizing a computing systems physical resources to achieve improved sharing and utilization. Full virtualization of all system resources—including processors, memory, and I/O devices—makes it possible to run multiple operating systems on a single physical platform. Virtualization has been there in the form of emulation software But Intel has given birth to a new technology called Intel virtualization technology(VT) which will allow OSes to run natively on the hardware. In a non-virtualized system, a single OS controls all hardware platform resources. An Intel virtualized system includes a new layer of software, the virtual machine monitor (VMM) or hypervisor. The VMM\'s principal role is to arbitrate accesses to the underlying physical host platform\'s resources so that multiple operating systems (which are guests of the VMM) can share them. The VMM presents to each guest OS a set of virtual platform interfaces that constitute a virtual machine (VM). Intel Virtualization Technology can be very useful for uptime and security purposes. If there are five copies of Redhat running Apache . if the fifth one goes down we can simply pass incoming requests to the other four while the fifth is reloading. Thus increasing the uptime.If we save \'snapshots\' of a running OS, we can reload it every time something unpleasant happens like hacking, Viruses. Reload the image from a clean state and patch it up, quick. We can simply load, unload and save OSes like programs. VT-x and VT-i are the first components of Intel Virtualization Technology, a series of processor and chipset innovations soon to become available in IA-based client and server platforms.