3/10 Extension applications

Reading

In our last virtualization vs. extensibility discussion, we cover two papers describing pretty wild applications of virtual machine and eBPF technology.

  1. “Live Migration of Virtual Machines”, Christopher Clark, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Jacob Gorm Hansen, Eric Jul, Christian Limpach, Ian Pratt, Andrew Warfield (NSDI 2005)

  2. “Electrode: Accelerating Distributed Protocols with eBPF”, Yang Zhou, Zezhou Wang, Sowmya Dharanipragada, Minlan Yu (NSDI 2023; presentation available)

Reading questions

  1. The Live Migration paper presents its evaluation using a wide range of different kinds of graph, including many graphs showing a single experiment’s behavior over time. The Electrode paper uses mostly a single kind of graph (the latency vs. throughput graph) that summarizes many different experimental conditions. Give an advantage of each style of presentation.

  2. CLASS DEBATE! We have now read a range of papers about VMs and eBPF. Which of these technologies is cooler? Pick one and come prepared to argue for its coolness (using any definition of coolness you’d like).