CN100553214C - Mobile virtual environment system - Google Patents

Abstract

A mobile virtual environment system includes a monitoring layer, a virtual machine, a virtual environment task manager, a host operating system, a host application program and a front interface. They are respectively constructed on the current host and the target host, so that the current host can present the working environment of the target host, and can provide users with a familiar virtual working environment in different working places.

Description

Mobile Virtual Environment System

technical field

The invention relates to the field of pervasive computing environment in computer science, in particular to a mobile virtual environment system.

Background technique

In actual research, researchers often leave the laboratory due to work needs and go to another scientific research environment to continue research. In this case, researchers often face a scientific research environment that is very different from the laboratory environment they are familiar with, so they urgently hope to establish a familiar mobile scientific research environment oriented to personal research.

The establishment of a scientific activity environment based on the network environment has become a hotspot and frontier field in the current international computer technology research and application, which has attracted great attention from foreign governments, academia and industry. environment for research and development.

At present, the research on the virtual environment system combined with the virtual machine technology has just started and is not yet mature, and a unified concept has not been formed.

The SVGrid project of the University of Michigan (University of Michigan) proposes a secure virtual grid computing environment to protect the file system and network of grid computers from malicious grid application programs. Grid applications are assigned to one or more grid virtual machines, and the file system and network services involved in these virtual machines are handed over to a dedicated monitoring virtual machine. In this way, all file and network access requests must be submitted to the monitoring virtual machine, so the security policy is guaranteed. This way of dividing resources ensures that even if the performance of a grid virtual machine is compromised, it cannot be bypassed or prohibited from executing security. Strategy. This study pays more attention to the guarantee of security issues after the introduction of virtual machine technology.

The computer laboratory of Middle Tennessee State University in the United States is researching and developing a customizable portable virtual machine (CPVM), and statically replicated on it to realize a virtual laboratory environment. Users can use any USB interface or FTP Client computers can run this virtual machine and enter a virtual research environment. It can provide compilers, desktop management, and smart disk devices like a virtual operating system. The result of this replication is very similar to the host environment in the laboratory. The shortcoming of this project is that this kind of virtual laboratory environment can only be constructed statically, and cannot be "mobile".

Researchers from the University of Florida and Northwestern University jointly proposed a new method of grid computing. The goal is to change the traditional implementation of grid computing, that is, to move the abstraction level from the operating system user to the operating system virtual machine. This method is based on the traditional operating system-level virtual machine and the middleware mechanism for managing virtual machines in a distributed environment. Its abstraction is a virtual machine that can be dynamically instantiated and moved, which integrates traditional operating system processes and VM state files.

Researchers from the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory proposed the concept of virtual workspace, introducing two services into the grid environment: a virtual machine warehouse, which provides a management interface for the workspace; The virtual machine manager is used to coordinate the application of virtual machines. This project regards this kind of virtual workspace more as a grid service. Each space can only be specific to a specific task. For new tasks with different resource requirements, they can only be rebuilt and executed. to universality.

Contents of the invention

The present invention is committed to satisfying the urgent needs in reality, and proposes a mobile virtual environment system combined with virtual machine technology, whose function is to describe and customize the working environment of the target host on the current host used by researchers , replicated and presented to provide researchers with a mobile and familiar virtual working environment system.

For this reason, the technical solution of the present invention to solve the technical problem is: provide a kind of mobile virtual environment system, it is constructed on the current host and the target host respectively, makes the current host present the working environment of the target host, it is characterized in that, comprises: monitoring layer, virtual machine, virtual environment task manager, host operating system, host application and front-end interface, where:

The monitoring layer runs directly on the physical hardware of the current host, and it provides a virtual interface set to the upper-layer virtual machine to interact with the underlying physical hardware;

The virtual machine provides a configuration and loading carrier for the mobile virtual environment system, which includes domain 0 and domain U. Domain 0 is automatically created when the system is booted. It relies on the domain 0 control interface provided by the monitoring layer to create and manage domain U, and can Execute management tasks; domain U is the domain actually used by users, which is responsible for receiving, processing and returning results of specific tasks;

The host operating system is the operating system running on the monitoring layer, which provides host environment information for the mobile virtual environment system in conjunction with the software resources running therein;

The virtual environment task manager is responsible for ensuring that the mobile virtual environment system is available for the tasks submitted by the researchers after the mobile virtual environment system is built, and can be executed and return the results. The virtual environment task manager includes local interfaces, Remote interface, input interface and output interface, the local interface is used to contact the host operating system, the remote interface is used to contact the remote host, the input interface is used to receive the task submitted by the foreground interface, and the output interface is used to return the task execution result to the foreground interface ;

The host application program is an application program running on the host operating system, which is an important part of the host environment information;

The front-end interface provides a graphical interface for users to customize the virtual environment, as well as an interface for task submission and result return.

Wherein, the virtual interface set of the monitoring layer includes virtual CPU, virtual memory, virtual disk, virtual network card and so on.

Wherein, there is a virtual environment controller running in the domain 0, and the domain 0 control interface of the monitoring layer is responsible for tasks such as customization and loading of the entire virtual environment. The virtual environment controller mainly includes a descriptor, a customizer, a loader and Transmitter, the descriptor is responsible for describing the environment information and typically describing various software resources to generate description files; the customizer generates configuration strategies according to user requirements and description files; the loader loads the virtual machine according to the configuration strategy; the transmitter is responsible for configuring the target host The policy is transmitted to the current host, and the current host also accepts the configuration policy of the target host through the transmitter. The transmitter is also responsible for interacting with the virtual environment task manager after the mobile virtual environment system is loaded, so as to complete the distribution and execution of tasks and other functions.

Wherein, the virtual environment task manager includes a dispatcher, which is mainly responsible for judging whether a specific task is delivered to the virtual machine itself or needs to use other host or virtual machine resources, if the virtual machine itself has enough resources to complete the task , then execute it directly on the local virtual machine, and return the result to the user from the foreground interface; otherwise, you need to use the local resources of the current host, or submit them to the remote destination host, which will schedule the applicable resources to complete the execution, and send The result is returned to the foreground interface.

Wherein, the domain U includes customized software and a task display layer. The customized software is a software resource that is customized and installed by the virtual environment controller according to the host environment information and user requirements when creating and configuring the domain. When the task comes, the customized software Participating in the execution of tasks The task display layer is responsible for the submission of tasks and the return of results, and is "visible" to researchers through the front-end interface.

Compared with the prior art, the present invention has the following beneficial effects:

Compared with the method of using mobile terminals and other devices to carry personal workspaces, the advantage of the mobile virtual environment system is that researchers do not need to carry physical devices with them, and are not responsible for the security of physical resources, but the network is responsible for the security and reliability of data transmission. Most importantly, due to the limited resources of the mobile terminal itself, some large-scale computing resources in the original scientific research environment cannot be carried by terminals such as laptops, resulting in often unavailable workspaces on them. However, using the mobile virtual environment system combined with the network environment can solve this problem by establishing a cooperative working mechanism with other virtual environments or hosts.

Description of drawings

Fig. 1 is the architecture of the mobile virtual environment system;

Fig. 2 is the hierarchical structure of the mobile virtual environment system;

Fig. 3 is the workflow of mobile virtual environment system;

Fig. 4 is an application scenario of the mobile virtual environment system.

Detailed ways

Architecture of Mobile Virtual Environment System

As shown in Figure 1, the architecture of the mobile virtual environment system is mainly divided into the following components: monitoring layer, virtual machine, virtual environment task manager, host application program, host operating system and front-end interface. The virtual machine mainly includes domain 0 and domain U, which provide configuration and loading carriers for the mobile virtual environment system; the host operating system mainly provides initial host environment information. The respective main components shown in Fig. 1 are explained below.

monitoring layer

The mobile virtual environment system is based on virtual machine technology. The monitoring layer is a layer that runs directly on the hardware. It provides a virtual interface set (such as virtual CPU, virtual memory, virtual disk, etc.) The physical hardware (processor, memory, disk, etc.) interacts.

Virtual machines are divided into two domains: domain 0 and domain U. Domain 0 is automatically created when the system is booted. It has special administrative rights and can create and manage other more domains (domain U). It can perform management tasks, including physical sleep, wake-up and migration of virtual machines, etc. But domain 0 cannot directly control and manage other domains, it must rely on the domain 0 control interface provided by the monitoring layer to complete the task. As for the control interface, it is only allowed to be accessed and called by domain 0, and other domains do not have permission to access and use this interface. The mobile virtual environment system accesses the control interface of the monitoring layer through domain 0 to manage the entire system. Each functional module in the virtual environment controller implemented in domain 0 can realize the desired function only through the domain 0 control interface of the monitoring layer.

The operating system running on the monitoring layer is called the host operating system, which provides host environment information for the mobile virtual environment system in combination with the software layer resources running in it. If the host is the target host, then its host environment information is one of the main reference sources for researchers when customizing the generation and configuration strategy of the personalized mobile virtual environment system.

Virtual Environment Controller

The virtual environment controller is one of the key components of the mobile virtual environment system. It runs in domain 0 and is responsible for customizing and loading the entire virtual environment through the control interface of the monitoring layer. It mainly includes descriptors, customizers, loaders and transporters. The descriptor is responsible for describing the environment information and typically describing various software resources; the customizer and the loader load the virtual machine according to the researcher's requirements or configuration strategies; the transmitter is responsible for transferring the required configuration strategies to the current host and moving the virtual environment After the system is loaded, it is responsible for interacting with the task manager to complete tasks such as distribution and execution.

The virtual environment controller is mainly responsible for the space customization and loading work in the early stage. Among them, the customization work is mainly completed by the descriptor and the customizer, and the loading is mainly completed by the customizer and the loader.

The descriptor must first describe the execution environment of the target host, which includes information such as the version of the operating system and information about some commonly used software. By typicalizing the description information, the description file of the target host's description environment is obtained, and provided to the customizer for reference and selection by researchers to generate the final configuration strategy.

The customizer mainly combines the description file and the personal choice of the researcher to obtain the basic configuration information of the virtual machine, and finally generates the configuration strategy of the virtual environment. Since the software resources listed in the description file are not necessarily the necessary software resources for researchers in this research activity, researchers can choose the software resources that need to be used according to the actual needs of this research activity, so that The purpose of streamlining the configuration strategy as much as possible is achieved.

The customizer mainly generates the final configuration strategy based on the description file and the actual selection of the researcher, and provides it to the loader and the transmitter. The loader uses it to configure the virtual environment, the current host requests to transmit the configuration policy, and the transmitter of the target host sends the configuration policy to the transmitter of the current host through the network.

The loader allocates the corresponding virtual machine resources (the size of the virtual memory, the capacity of the virtual disk, etc.) according to the researcher's needs according to the configuration policy, starts the virtual machine, and selects and installs the corresponding software resources according to the configuration policy.

Virtual Environment Task Manager

The virtual environment task manager is another key component of the mobile virtual environment system. It is mainly responsible for ensuring that the mobile virtual environment system is available for the tasks submitted by researchers, can be executed and returns results after the mobile virtual environment system is built. .

By using the virtual environment task controller, researchers can statically build a virtual machine-based mobile virtual environment system, but the virtual environment is limited to the limited resources of its own virtual machine carrier, and can only complete simple tasks involving fewer resources, namely Completed tasks can be directly executed on its own virtual machine. This is very inconvenient or even unusable for researchers. Practical scientific research often involves large-scale data calculations and can only be completed using large-scale software or hardware resources. In this case, the built mobile virtual environment system cannot be just a static working environment for researchers, it should be able to connect with more abundant resources, such as connecting with the current host and the target host through the network , so that it can schedule and use more abundant resources on each host for its own use, so as to complete the complex tasks that researchers may submit.

The core component of the virtual environment task manager is the dispatcher, which is mainly responsible for judging whether a specific task is delivered to the virtual machine itself or needs to use other host or virtual machine resources. If the resources of the virtual machine itself are sufficient to complete the task, then it will be executed directly on the local virtual machine, and the result will be returned to the researcher from the foreground interface; otherwise, the local resources of the current host need to be used, or submitted to the remote destination host. The execution of the applicable resources scheduled by it is completed, and the result is returned to the foreground interface of the mobile virtual environment system.

Based on the functions of the distributor, the functions of the other components include:

The input interface is mainly to provide researchers with a task submission interface. The front-end interface submits the task to the distributor through it, and it decides where to execute it; whether it is local or remote, after the task is executed, the results are obtained through the output interface. Output to the foreground interface, that is, return to the researcher the result of the task execution.

Both the local and remote interfaces cooperate with the transmitter in the virtual environment controller to realize the function. If the distributor decides that the execution of the task requires the participation of the software resources of the local host, then it submits the task to the local host through the local interface and the transmitter. It schedules the necessary local host resources to execute the task; if the distributor judges that the task cannot be completed in combination with the participation of the local host software resources and resources on the remote host are needed, then the task is submitted to the remote host through the remote interface and the transmitter. It schedules the necessary remote host resources to perform tasks.

Mobile virtual environment system foreground interface

The foreground interface of the mobile virtual environment system is the interface that the researchers can see, and it shields all the details when the task is executed in the background. For the researchers, they don't know whether the tasks they submit are completed on the local virtual machine or on the remote host, that is, the execution process of the tasks is "transparent" to them, and the mobile virtual environment system just needs to be completed. Make sure that the researchers get the results of the task execution within a tolerable time.

Before the mobile virtual environment system is built, what researchers face on the current host is the interface of customizing the virtual environment. Researchers can choose the appropriate hardware and software resources according to their own preferences and needs according to the host environment information of the target host. Finally, the personalized configuration strategy of the mobile virtual environment system is generated.

After loading and configuring the mobile virtual environment system required by the researcher according to the configuration strategy, the researcher can see the virtual environment execution interface where the task can be submitted. The researcher submits the task to this interface, if the task is a simple task, the researcher will get the execution result of the task quickly; if the task is complex and requires the participation of host resources, then the researcher can use the virtual environment to perform the task after submitting the task For other tasks, such as performing some tasks that require less resources, the previous complex tasks are automatically handed over to the background for execution, and the final results will be returned to the researchers immediately once the execution is completed.

Hierarchical Structure of Mobile Virtual Environment System

Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of the hierarchical structure of the mobile virtual environment system. The IP network is the bottom layer. The target host and other hosts (current hosts 1 and 2) that require to replicate their virtual environment are connected through the IP network and establish communication with each other; on this basis, running on each host The virtual machines (virtual machines t, c1, c2, c3) build a virtual network connecting each other, which can be abstracted into a virtual network layer; the top layer is the mobile virtual environment system presented on each virtual machine (Mobile virtual environment system t, c1, c2, c3), they together form a large virtual space, in this virtual space collaboratively complete the research task.

It can also be seen from Figure 2 that the mapping relationship between tasks and underlying material resources in the hierarchical structure of the entire mobile virtual environment system. In the virtual space layer, all the mobile virtual environment systems loaded on the target host or the current host cooperate to complete the same task; while in the virtual network layer, research tasks are mapped into various virtual resources, which interact with each other through the virtual network , to support the completion of upper-layer tasks; in the IP network layer, various virtual resources in the upper layer are mapped into relevant actual physical resources, which are distributed and used through the physical network, and finally complete the research tasks of the virtual space layer.

Workflow of Mobile Virtual Environment System

The main steps of the mobile virtual environment system workflow are shown in Figure 3.

When researchers need to build a mobile virtual environment system on the current host (system start):

a) The descriptor collects various resource information of the target host environment, describes the typical information sufficient to describe the environment, and provides it to the customizer; if the transmitter of the current host has received the status information transmitted by the target host, no description is required implementer, and provide state information directly to the customizer.

b) According to the information provided by the descriptor and combined with the researcher's needs, the customizer generates a configuration strategy and provides it to the loader and the transmitter.

c) Through the domain 0 control interface of the monitoring layer, the loader loads the virtual machine in domain U according to the configuration policy, and the virtual environment is presented in domain U, and researchers can enter and use it. At this point, the virtual environment is loaded and realized (the system ends).

d) When the researcher uses the virtual environment to perform a certain task (task start), if the resources of the virtual machine itself are sufficient to perform the task, the researcher can quickly get the return result (task end).

e) If the resources of the virtual machine itself are insufficient to complete the task, then it is left to the task manager to decide how to perform the task.

f) If the execution of the task requires the data or software resources of the current host, the task manager will hand over the task to the current host and return the result; if the resources provided by the current host are still not enough to perform the task, the task manager will Submit it to the target host, and the target host will call the applicable resources in the network environment to complete the task and return the execution result. When the researcher sees the execution result of the task on the demo interface, the task execution process is also declared to be over (task end).

Application Scenarios of Mobile Virtual Environment System

Researchers leave the laboratory because of the actual needs of research tasks, and cannot use the computers in the laboratory and their computing, storage, data and other resources. Here, the lab's computer is called the target host.

Researchers arrive at new locations and use new computers, called current hosts. Researchers face a new working environment, but still want to use the working environment on their own laboratory computers, so they need to copy the working environment from the target host to the current host to meet the requirements, that is, the movement of the virtual environment.

The movement of the virtual environment is actually the communication between the virtual machines through the underlying IP network, and through the actual data transmission, the customized virtual environment is reproduced on another host through the virtual machine, as shown in Figure 4 Show. The two experimental environments, or the current host and the target host are connected through an IP network. To meet the needs of researchers, the execution environment of the target host needs to be virtualized into a virtual environment and transmitted through the network. Copy to the current host, and load the configuration on the mounted virtual machine to present it.

When a researcher leaves the familiar laboratory research environment and target host, and arrives in a new research environment, he/she is facing an unfamiliar research environment and the current host, but still wants to continue to use it in this new research environment Familiar laboratory research environment and various connection resources on the target host ①.

The target host first loads a virtual machine and configures it according to the host’s execution environment to obtain the virtual environment that researchers want②, and then transmits the environment status information of this virtual machine to the current host③, and the current host automatically configures and loads it. virtual machine, and get the same virtual machine execution environment as the virtual machine environment on the target host, that is, get the mobile virtual environment system that researchers want ④.

Researchers enter this virtual environment, that is, enter the execution environment of the familiar target host⑤, but this is only a virtualized presentation. After the virtual environment is moved, it is necessary to cooperate with other virtual environments or other hosts to complete research work based on the network , making it an operational and executable research environment for researchers.

This process is manifested as the "movement" of the virtual environment system on the virtual network⑥, but it is actually still realized through the underlying physical network.

Claims (3)

1. A mobile virtual environment system, which is respectively built on the current host and the target host so that the current host can present the working environment of the target host, is characterized in that it includes a monitoring layer, a virtual machine, a virtual environment task manager, and a host operating System, host application module and front-end interface, in which: The monitoring layer runs directly on the physical hardware of the host, and it provides a virtual interface set to the upper-layer virtual machine to interact with the underlying physical hardware; The virtual machine provides a configuration and loading carrier for the mobile virtual environment system, which includes domain 0 and domain U. Domain 0 is automatically created when the system is booted. It relies on the domain 0 control interface provided by the monitoring layer to create and manage domain U, and can Execute management tasks; domain U is the domain actually used by users, which is responsible for receiving, processing and returning results of specific tasks; The host operating system is the operating system running on the monitoring layer, which provides host environment information for the mobile virtual environment system in conjunction with the software resources running therein; The virtual environment task manager is responsible for ensuring that the mobile virtual environment system is available for the tasks submitted by the researchers after the mobile virtual environment system is built, and can be executed and return the results. The virtual environment task manager includes local interfaces, Remote interface, input interface and output interface, the local interface is used to contact the host operating system, the remote interface is used to contact the remote host, the input interface is used to receive the task submitted by the foreground interface, and the output interface is used to return the task execution result to the foreground interface ; The host application module runs on the host operating system, which is an important part of the host environment information; the foreground interface provides users with a graphical interface for customizing the virtual environment, as well as an interface for task submission and result return; the domain 0 runs a virtual The environment controller is responsible for the customization and loading tasks of the entire virtual environment through the domain 0 control interface of the monitoring layer. The virtual environment controller includes a descriptor, a customizer, a loader and a transmitter. The descriptor is responsible for describing the environment information and typical characterization Various software resources generate description files; the customizer generates configuration policies according to user requirements and description files; the loader loads the virtual machine according to the configuration policies; the transmitter of the target host is responsible for transmitting the configuration policies to the transmitter of the current host, and the transmitter also After the mobile virtual environment system is loaded, it is responsible for interacting with the virtual environment task manager to complete the task distribution and execution function; The virtual environment task manager includes a dispatcher, which is mainly responsible for judging whether a specific task is delivered to the virtual machine itself or needs to use other host or virtual machine resources. If the resources of the virtual machine itself are sufficient to complete the task, then Just execute it directly on the local virtual machine, and return the result to the user from the foreground interface; otherwise, you need to use the local resources of the current host, or submit it to the remote destination host, which will schedule the execution of the applicable resources and return the result to the foreground interface. 2. The mobile virtual environment system according to claim 1, wherein the virtual interface set of the monitoring layer includes virtual CPU, virtual memory, virtual disk, and virtual network card. 3. The mobile virtual environment system as claimed in claim 1, characterized in that said domain U includes customized software and a task presentation layer, and the customized software is created and configured by the virtual environment controller according to the host environment information and Users need to customize and install software resources. When the task comes, the customized software participates in the execution of the task; the task display layer is responsible for the submission of the task and the return of the result, and is "visible" to the researchers through the front interface.

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