5 ms·

Hypervisor Development in Rust

223 points by ingve 4y ago

carom 4y ago
Highly recommend the Gamozolabs streams for this type of work too. [1] 1. https://m.youtube.com/@gamozolabs/playlists https://m.youtube.com/@gamozolabs/playlists
LatticeAnimal 4y ago
This article seems to be targeting Windows. Does anyone know how different the process is on Linux? (Or if there are Linux-specific resources like this)
- traceroute66 4y ago
  AWS Firecracker[1] ? [1]https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/
  - LatticeAnimal 4y ago
    I mean in-depth guides like the one that was linked, not technologies, but thank you
    - ghostpepper 4y ago
      Not Linux but this is for UEFI https://tandasat.github.io/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust/ https://tandasat.github.io/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust/
- rektide 4y ago
  https://github.com/tandasat/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust https://github.com/tandasat/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust is there to help https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor isn't educational necessarily but is one of the most technically progressive fastest developing highest funded vm projects ever, and there are oodles of tech talks on it. I am not qualified to make any specific recommendations, but there's tons of stuff here.
  - the_duke 4y ago
    > and there are oodles of tech talks on it Can you recommend a few good ones? Searching Youtube for cloud-hypervisor doesn't yield anything solid.
- anaisbetts 4y ago
  All of the NT functions used here have 1:1 Linux kernel equivalents, they are all very fundamental kernel operations that every kernel will have
davemp 4y ago
This is a pretty good article about CPU virtualization, which is a key starting point (as this seems to be the starting point of a series). What I'm interested in at the moment is device virtualization, which seems like a pretty hairy problem in the current KVM paradigm. IOMMU is a big step but it seems there's just a lot of grunt work left for getting the host/guest drivers working well. It almost feels like exokernel [0] path would have been preferable over having to write windows/linux/mac host drivers for virtualizing buses/devices. We already have a very awkward overlap with UEFI drivers. Maybe we just need new HW bus designs that are more of a switch than mux, I haven't gone deep enough into modern bus controller designs to know though. The reality of doing this kind of research/work is a special hell though, because you sit in a crossfire between hardware/firmware/os/application vendors. [0]: https://wiki.osdev.org/Exokernel https://wiki.osdev.org/Exokernel
- bpye 4y ago
  There are features that improve device virtualisation. Things like SR-IOV allowing for multiple virtual functions on a single device, and ATS which (among other things) means that device memory doesn’t need to be pinned. The issue is that these features are at best supported on expensive data centre devices.

223 points by ingve 4y ago

Highly recommend the Gamozolabs streams for this type of work too. [1] 1. https://m.youtube.com/@gamozolabs/playlists https://m.youtube.com/@gamozolabs/playlists

LatticeAnimal 4y ago

This article seems to be targeting Windows. Does anyone know how different the process is on Linux? (Or if there are Linux-specific resources like this)

traceroute66 4y ago
AWS Firecracker[1] ? [1]https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/
- LatticeAnimal 4y ago
  I mean in-depth guides like the one that was linked, not technologies, but thank you
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    Not Linux but this is for UEFI https://tandasat.github.io/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust/ https://tandasat.github.io/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust/
rektide 4y ago
https://github.com/tandasat/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust https://github.com/tandasat/Hypervisor-101-in-Rust is there to help https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor isn't educational necessarily but is one of the most technically progressive fastest developing highest funded vm projects ever, and there are oodles of tech talks on it. I am not qualified to make any specific recommendations, but there's tons of stuff here.
- the_duke 4y ago
  > and there are oodles of tech talks on it Can you recommend a few good ones? Searching Youtube for cloud-hypervisor doesn't yield anything solid.
anaisbetts 4y ago
All of the NT functions used here have 1:1 Linux kernel equivalents, they are all very fundamental kernel operations that every kernel will have

davemp 4y ago

This is a pretty good article about CPU virtualization, which is a key starting point (as this seems to be the starting point of a series). What I'm interested in at the moment is device virtualization, which seems like a pretty hairy problem in the current KVM paradigm. IOMMU is a big step but it seems there's just a lot of grunt work left for getting the host/guest drivers working well. It almost feels like exokernel [0] path would have been preferable over having to write windows/linux/mac host drivers for virtualizing buses/devices. We already have a very awkward overlap with UEFI drivers. Maybe we just need new HW bus designs that are more of a switch than mux, I haven't gone deep enough into modern bus controller designs to know though. The reality of doing this kind of research/work is a special hell though, because you sit in a crossfire between hardware/firmware/os/application vendors. [0]: https://wiki.osdev.org/Exokernel https://wiki.osdev.org/Exokernel

bpye 4y ago
There are features that improve device virtualisation. Things like SR-IOV allowing for multiple virtual functions on a single device, and ATS which (among other things) means that device memory doesn’t need to be pinned. The issue is that these features are at best supported on expensive data centre devices.