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.
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 usegedit
. If you have no graphical desktop availablenano
will work.cd \MyDirMySubDir
iscd /MyDir/MySubDir
andcd..
must becd ..
.dir
isls
andls -l
will show additional information.run as administrator
has its equivalent insudo
, which has to be put before a command. For examplesudo gedit
starts the editor as administrator (calledroot
in Linux). You can usesudo -s
to switch console to root user andexit
to return.Most programs give helpful information being called with parameter
--help
or by calling the manualman
. In case ofgedit
this would begedit --help
andman gedit
.chmod
can change the rights (read/write/executable) of a file. In Windows you just create a filetest.bat
and you can already execute it. In Linux you name ittest.sh
, but it won’t run without being made anexecutable
.chown
can change the owner of a file.