Improving Software Dependability Using System-Level Virtualization: A Survey

This paper investigates different uses of system-level virtualization to improve dependability of software systems. Notable works are studied and presented in two categories, namely, the attributes of dependability and the means to attain those attributes. The works that have been done in improving different attributes of dependability including availability, reliability, safety, integrity and also fault tolerance as a mean to attain these attributes are studied. In addition, some notable researches in this area such as device driver separation, virtualization-based replication, and using VMMs to check the running guest operating systems are discussed.