Building a Virtual Machine-Based Network Storage System for Transparent Computing

Transparent computing separates computation and storage in different machines with a storage virtualization mechanism. In existing implementation, the user operating system needs to be modified to achieve storage virtualization. This paper presents a virtual machine-based network storage system for transparent computing, which uses a virtualized device model in service operating system to redirect device I/O requests in user operating system over networks to be serviced by the server. As a result, heterogeneous operating systems and applications can run on-demand without any modification in a transparent computing environment. The method enables users to focus on the needed computing without consideration of the technical issues or management. A prototype system implemented based on Xen and Intel VT verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the method.