{"id":174,"date":"2007-10-12T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/?p=174"},"modified":"2019-12-13T17:45:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T22:45:44","slug":"fast-kernel-debugging-for-vmware-part-7-review-and-final-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 7: Review and Final Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the final post in the VMKD<\/a> series, a set of articles describing a program that greatly enhances the performance of kernel debugging in VMware virtual machines.<\/p>\n

The following posts are members of the VMKD series:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 1: Overview<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 2: KD Transport Module Interface<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 3: Guest to Host Communication Overview<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 4: Communicating with the VMware VMM<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 5: Bridging the Gap to DbgEng.dll<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 6: Roadmap to Future Improvements<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 7: Review and Final Comments<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At this point, the basic concepts behind how VMKD accelerates the kernel debugging experience in VMware should at the very least be vaguely familiar. This doesn’t mean that the story ends with VMKD, however. Many of the general, high-level concepts that VMKD uses to improve the performance of kernel debugging guests can be applied to other areas of the system.<\/p>\n

    That is to say, there are a number of implications outside of simply kernel debugging that are worth considering in the new reality that pervasive virtualization presents to us. Virtualization aware operating systems and applications present the potential for significant improvements in performance, user experience, and raw capabilities pretty much across the board as we move from seeing virtualization as a way to abstract interfaces intended to communicate with real hardware into a world where operating systems and drivers may more commonly be fully cognizent of the fact that they are operating in a VM. For example, one could conceivably imagine a time when 3D video performance approaches native performance on “bare metal”, thanks to virtualization awareness in display drivers and the interfaces they use to talk to the outside world.<\/p>\n

    In that respect, it seems logical to me that there may eventually become a time when virtualization is no longer simply about creating the virtual illusion of a physical machine. Instead, it may come to pass that virtualization ends up being more about providing an optimized “virtual platform” that does away with the constraints of hardware interfaces that are designed to be accessed by a single operating system at at time, in favor of a more abstract model where resources are natively accessed and shared by virtualized operating systems in a fashion that considers a virtual platform as a first class citizen rather than a mere echo of a physical machine.<\/p>\n

    Virtualization is here to stay. The sooner that it becomes accepted as a first class citizen in the operating system world, the better, I say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is the final post in the VMKD series, a set of articles describing a program that greatly enhances the performance of kernel debugging in VMware virtual machines. The following posts are members of the VMKD series: Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 1: Overview Fast kernel debugging for VMware, part 2: KD Transport Module […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nynaeve.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}