Server virtualization technologies for x86-based HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant servers, 3rd edition

Hosted OS, kernel-layer abstraction

Kernel-layer abstraction refers to a technique in which the abstraction technology is built directly into

the OS kernel rather than having a separate hypervisor layer. This approach can still follow the

requirements of hardware-assisted (AMD-V or Intel VT-x virtualization technologies) and

paravirtualization, but removes the discrete hypervisor layer. The direct access to hardware could

potentially provide greater performance than using a binary translation technology; however,

because there is no separation between the hypervisor the operating system, there is the possibility

that resource conflicts may occur between multiple virtual machines.

See the article titled ―Xen proponents question merits of Red Hat KVM hypervisor‖ at

http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/article/0,,sid94_gci1318772,00.html; and for the opposing view,

see Qumranet’s white paper titled ‖KVM - Kernel-based Virtualization Machine‖ at