[lk] NOVA Microhypervisor

[Peter Teoh]

From the Operating Systems Group » Department of Computer Science » TU Dresden: http://www.hypervisor.org/ NOVA Microhypervisor The NOVA OS Virtualization Architecture is a research project aimed at constructing a secure virtualization environment with a small trusted computing base. NOVA consists of a microhypervisor and an unprivileged multi-server user environment running on top of it. Like third-generation microkernels, the NOVA microhypervisor uses a capability-based authorization model and provides only basic mechanisms for virtualization, spatial and temporal separation, scheduling, communication, and management of platform resources. The disaggregated multi-server environment implements additional operating-system services in user mode, such as device drivers, protocol stacks, and policies. On machines with hardware virtualization features, NOVA can run multiple unmodified guest operating systems concurrently. Each VM has its own associated virtual-machine monitor (VMM) that runs as an unprivileged user application on top of the microhypervisor. Supported Platforms NOVA runs on multi-core x86 machines that support ACPI, under QEMU (including VM support), and as a microkernel in a virtual machine on top of itself. A platform with Intel VT-x or AMD-V is required for running guest operating systems in VMs. User Environments The NOVA user-level environment, NUL, includes the virtual-machine monitor, a partition manager, and device drivers. The Genode operating system framework, a highly dynamic user-level environment, has also been ported to NOVA. Download The source code of the NOVA microhypervisor is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2. NOVA Microhypervisor 0.4 prerelease Publications U. Steinberg, B. Kauer NOVA: A Microhypervisor-Based Secure Virtualization Architecture Eurosys 2010 U. Steinberg, B. Kauer Towards a Scalable Multiprocessor User-Level Environment IIDS 2010 U. Steinberg, A. Böttcher, B. Kauer Timeslice Donation in Component-Based Systems OSPERT 2010 U. Steinberg, B. Kauer NOVA: Virtualization with a Small Trusted Computing Base OSDI 2008 Poster Session B. Kauer, U. Steinberg, J. Stecklina Rapid I/O: Improving the Efficiency of I/O Virtualization Eurosys 2010 Poster Session Additional Resources NOVA User Environment NOVA Demo CD (ISO image)