 | This article needs to be updated.(November 2017) |
In computing, virtualization is the use of a computer to simulate another computer. The following is a chronological list of virtualization technologies.
| This article needs to be updated.(November 2017) |
In computing, virtualization is the use of a computer to simulate another computer. The following is a chronological list of virtualization technologies.
Note: This timeline is missing data for important historical systems, including: Atlas Computer (Manchester), GE 645, Burroughs B5000.
In the mid-1960s, IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center develops CP-40, the first version of CP/CMS. Experience on the CP-40 project provides input to the development of the IBM System/360 Model 67, announced in 1965. CP-40 is re-implemented for the S/360-67 as CP-67, and by April 1967, both versions are in daily production use.
IBM announces the System/370 in 1970. In 1972, IBM announces that virtual memory would be made available on all S/370 models, and also announces several virtual storage operating systems, including VM/370. By the mid-1970s, CP/CMS, VM, and VP/CSS are running on numerous large IBM mainframes.
IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the computer market with the 7000 series and the later System/360, followed by the System/370. Current mainframe computers in IBM's line of business computers are developments of the basic design of the System/360.
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of the two. Virtual machines differ and are organized by their function, shown here:
Hercules is a computer emulator allowing software written for IBM mainframe computers and for plug compatible mainframes to run on other types of computer hardware, notably on low-cost personal computers. Development started in 1999 by Roger Bowler, a mainframe systems programmer.
Computer operating systems (OSes) provide a set of functions needed and used by most application programs on a computer, and the links needed to control and synchronize computer hardware. On the first computers, with no operating system, every program needed the full hardware specification to run correctly and perform standard tasks, and its own drivers for peripheral devices like printers and punched paper card readers. The growing complexity of hardware and application programs eventually made operating systems a necessity for everyday use.
This article presents a timeline of events in the history of computer operating systems from 1951 to the current day. For a narrative explaining the overall developments, see the History of operating systems.
VM is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers.
CP/CMS is a discontinued time-sharing operating system of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is known for its excellent performance and advanced features. Among its three versions, CP-40/CMS was an important 'one-off' research system that established the CP/CMS virtual machine architecture. It was followed by CP-67/CMS, a reimplementation of CP-40/CMS for the IBM System/360-67, and the primary focus of this article. Finally, CP-370/CMS was a reimplementation of CP-67/CMS for the System/370. While it was never released as such, it became the foundation of IBM's VM/370 operating system, announced in 1972.
Xen is a free and open-source type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and is now being developed by the Linux Foundation with support from Intel, Citrix, Arm Ltd, Huawei, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, AMD, Bitdefender and EPAM Systems.
z/VM is the current version in IBM's VM family of virtual machine operating systems. First released in October 2000, z/VM remains in active use and development as of 2024. It is directly based on technology and concepts dating back to the 1960s, particularly IBM's CP/CMS on the IBM System/360-67. z/VM runs on IBM's IBM Z family of computers and can support large numbers (thousands) of Linux virtual machines.
A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Unlike an emulator, the guest executes most instructions on the native hardware. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This contrasts with operating-system–level virtualization, where all instances must share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux distributions with the same kernel.
QEMU is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate the processor of a computer. It provides a variety of hardware and device models for the virtual machine, enabling it to run different guest operating systems. QEMU can be used in conjunction with a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to emulate hardware at near-native speeds. Additionally, it supports user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one processor architecture to run on another.
Platform virtualization software, specifically emulators and hypervisors, are software packages that emulate the whole physical computer machine, often providing multiple virtual machines on one physical platform. The table below compares basic information about platform virtualization hypervisors.
OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) virtualization paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, including containers, zones, virtual private servers (OpenVZ), partitions, virtual environments (VEs), virtual kernels, and jails. Such instances may look like real computers from the point of view of programs running in them. A computer program running on an ordinary operating system can see all resources of that computer. Programs running inside a container can only see the container's contents and devices assigned to the container.
Oracle VirtualBox is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, which was in turn acquired by Oracle in 2010.
In computing, virtualization (v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers.
libvirt is an open-source API, daemon and management tool for managing platform virtualization. It can be used to manage KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, QEMU and other virtualization technologies. These APIs are widely used in the orchestration layer of hypervisors in the development of a cloud-based solution.
A system virtual machine is a virtual machine (VM) that provides a complete system platform and supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use, or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness, or both. A VM was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine".
86Box is an IBM PC emulator for Windows, Linux and Mac based on PCem that specializes in running old operating systems and software that are designed for IBM PC compatibles. Originally forked from PCem, it later added support for other IBM PC compatible computers as well.
LPAR2RRD is an open-source software tool that is used for monitoring and reporting performance of servers, clouds and databases. It is developed by the Czech company XoruX.