1. Introduction

1.1. Overview

Using the existing, industry proven acontis real-time RTOS-VM virtualization technology, multiple hard real-time operating systems (Real-time Linux, VxWorks, etc.) can run in native speed. In addition, based on the well-known and proven KVM virtualization solution, multiple standard operating systems like Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc.) operate in parallel. Besides virtual hardware, KVM provides para-virtualization, PCI/USB and VGA pass-through for highest possible performance. Each guest OS is fully independent and separated and can be rebooted or shutdown while the other guests continue without being affected.

_images/overview.png

RTOS Virtual Machine Hypervisor

The RTOS Virtual Machine hypervisor technology provides an independent layer to run any RTOS in native speed. No virtualization overhead is introduced and all RTOS drivers as well the operating systems and applications have direct and fast hardware access. The same technology is successfully used by customers all over the world since more than 10 years in the existing acontis real-time solution. The new acontis Hypervisor can utilize this technology without modification so existing customer applications can be re-used without modification.

KVM Hypervisor

KVM is one of the most popular Type 1 hypervisors used in many high-availability and security critical environments like the cloud solutions from Google, Amazon or Oracle.

To increase performance, for example for fast USB, Ethernet or Graphics operation, the respective devices can be completely passed through to Windows or Linux guests. Alternatively, para-virtualized devices for the hard disk, the Ethernet or graphics controller reduce the amount of necessary hardware without compromising throughput.

Key technical features

The acontis Hypervisor is a perfect symbiosis between the wide-spread KVM virtualization solution and the industry proven RTOS Virtual Machine hypervisor for real-time operating systems.

General

  • Supports Multiple OSes: real-time Linux, On Time RTOS-32, VxWorks® RTOS, Standard Linux, Microsoft® Windows®, proprietary Roll-your-own, Bare metal, any unmodified OS

  • RTOS containers including applications run on bare metal core with no virtualization overhead and direct hardware access

  • Fully separated and independent guest operation

  • User defined guest startup sequence

  • Utilize any number of CPU cores per single guest

  • Independent reboot of all guests while others continue operation

  • Virtual Network between all guests

  • Inter-OS Communication: Shared Memory, Events, Interlocked data access, Pipes, Message Queues and Real-time sockets for high speed application level communication

  • Hypervisor provided fileserver for all guests

KVM

Windows and Standard Linux operating systems like Ubuntu or Debian run under control of the KVM hypervisor. This hypervisor provides plenty of sophisticated features:

  • Multiple Windows and/or standard Linux instances

  • Windows/Linux containers with snapshot support to easily switch between different application situations without the need to install multiple OS instances. Snapshots create a view of a running virtual machine at a given point in time. Multiple snapshots can be saved and used to return to a previous state, in the event of a problem.

  • Pass-through support: To increase performance, for example for fast USB, Ethernet or Graphics operation, the respective devices can be completely passed through to Windows or Linux guests.

  • Paravirtualization: Para-virtualized devices for the hard disk, the ethernet or graphics controller reduce the amount of necessary hardware without compromising throughput.

  • Graphics virtualization to provide 3D accelerated graphics to multiple guests.

RTOS-VM

  • Multiple real-time Operating Systems (Linux, VxWorks, On Time RTOS-32, etc.)

  • Fast real-time interrupt handling and short thread latencies

  • Direct hardware access with no virtualization overhead

  • Compatible with the existing acontis Windows real-time extension (applications can be shared or cross-migrated between both solutions)

1.2. Linux for Windows users

The following points may help a Windows user with the first Linux steps.

  • Windows Command Prompt is called Terminal in Linux. The shortkey to open one is Ctrl + Alt + T.

  • Instead of notepad.exe you can use gedit. If you have no graphical desktop available nano will work.

  • cd \MyDirMySubDir is cd /MyDir/MySubDir and cd.. must be cd ...

  • dir is ls and ls -l will show additional information.

  • run as administrator has its equivalent in sudo, which has to be put before a command. For example sudo gedit starts the editor as administrator (called root in Linux). You can use sudo -s to switch console to root user and exit to return.

  • Most programs give helpful information being called with parameter --help or by calling the manual man. In case of gedit this would be gedit --help and man gedit.

  • chmod can change the rights (read/write/executable) of a file. In Windows you just create a file test.bat and you can already execute it. In Linux you name it test.sh, but it won’t run without being made an executable.

  • chown can change the owner of a file.