A paravirtualized operating system is an operating system that is modified to run in a paravirtualized environment, which provides a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware. In paravirtualized mode, the guest operating system is explicitly ported for the para application programming interface (API) to facilitate communication with the host virtualization platform.
A paravirtualized operating system does not require whole system emulation. The management module, or the hypervisor, in a paravirtualized mode operates within a paravirtualized operating system that has been modified to work in a virtual machine. Generally, a paravirtualized operating system performs better than a fully virtualized operating system in which all the system elements must be emulated. However, this efficiency is offered at the cost of security and flexibility. Flexibility is compromised because the operating system requires modification to run in paravirtualized mode. Security is compromised because the guest operating system has more control over the underlying hardware, thereby increasing risk to the lower-level hardware, which could affect all guest operating systems running on the host. Paravirtualization’s efficiencies can also result in better scaling. Paravirtualization requires only 2 percent processor use per guest instance per processor, as compared to full virtualization, in which processor use is 10 percent per guest instance per processor. A paravirtualized operating system can reduce overall performance degradation by relocating critical task execution from the virtual domain to the host domain.
Read More »
Get Techopedia delivered to your inbox!