Independence From The Operating System

Independence From The Operating System

Virtualization is almost as old as mainframe computers, when a large computer was shared by several different users. Computer engineers have also struggled with many different Operating Systems (OS) that traditionally worked on specialized hardware. Usually only one OS could be loaded on one physical machine at one time. This posed a significant barrier to experimentation and testing of multi-OS environments.

These VMs can relieve instructors and students of the configuration issues across different physical machines; every class's VM can be loaded the same way. These VMs have additional benefits. Dedicated VMs can be created to address OS, software and configuration needs of a specific course or research topic. For instance, students in security classes can initiate viruses on the VM without damaging their machines to see how the viruses attack. Students in networking class can simulate an entire network with router and multiple hosts on a single machine. Students and instructors who simply wish to run another OS for better software compatibility can make great use of VMs. It is the point of this presentation to illustrate the steps we have made toward finding direct uses for VMs and how we are planning to distribute them effectively.