Optimizing virtual machines using hybrid virtualization

It is crucial to minimize virtualization overhead for virtual machine deployment. The conventional ×86 CPU is incapable of classical trap-and-emulate virtualization, leading that paravirtualization was the optimal virtualization strategy formerly. Since architectural extensions are introduced to support classical virtualization, hardware assisted virtualization becomes a competitive alternative method. Hardware assisted virtualization is superior in CPU and memory virtualization, yet paravirtualization is still valuable in some aspects as it is capable of shortening the disposal path of I/O virtualization. Thus we propose the hybrid virtualization which runs the paravirtualized guest in the hardware assisted virtual machine container to take advantage of both. Experiment results indicate that our hybrid solution outweighs origin paravirtualization by nearly 30% in memory intensive test and 50% in microbenchmarks. Meanwhile, compared with the origin hardware assisted virtual machine, hybrid guest owns over 16% improvement in I/O intensive workloads.