Q12Cloud Computing
Question
Discuss the difference between full virtualization and para-virtualization.
Answer
Full virtualization simulates the underlying hardware allowing unmodified OS to run, whereas para-virtualization requires OS modification for better performance.
In Full Virtualization, the virtual machine simulates enough hardware to allow an unmodified 'guest' OS to run in isolation. The hypervisor traps and translates all privileged instructions. In contrast, Para-virtualization modifies the guest OS so it knows it is running in a virtualized environment. The OS communicates directly with the hypervisor via hypercalls, reducing the overhead of binary translation and improving performance, but it sacrifices compatibility since unmodified OSes (like standard Windows) cannot run.