Overview

Compute virtualization abstracts physical server resources into logical resources through virtualization technology, enabling a single physical server to function as multiple isolated virtual machines. It pools hardware resources such as CPU, memory, disk, and I/O devices into a virtual resource pool for unified dynamic management. Consequently, it improves resource utilization, reduces system management costs, and increases IT agility to adapt to business changes.

ZSphere uses KVM-based hardware virtualization. KVM is a Linux kernel module that turns the Linux kernel into a hypervisor. Each VM runs as a Linux process scheduled by the standard Linux scheduler, allowing KVM to use existing kernel capabilities such as memory management and CPU scheduling. KVM provides CPU and memory virtualization, while QEMU provides the user-space device models required for I/O device virtualization and manages the virtual devices presented to VMs.