Virtualization, broadly speaking, is a recognition of the adage that any problem in computer science can be solved through the introduction of an additional layer of indirection.  The technique is applied to modern systems at many interfaces, from hardware (Xen, VMware), to OS system calls (VServers, Jails), to high-level language run times (Java, Python).  While these approaches differ dramatically in implementation, they provide similar benefits and often must tackle related challenges.

The 2010 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments brings together researchers across the many applications of virtualization in today’s systems.  We invite original papers on topics relating to virtualization — especially those that will have broad appeal across these approaches. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Design and implementation of the virtualization layer,
• The use of virtualization to provide novel functionality, such as high availability, enhanced security and dependability,
• Challenges in applying virtualization in new environments, such as unusual architectures, real-time constraints, and very large scales,
• Novel virtualization techniques to support cloud computing,
• Development and debugging for virtual environments, such as record/replay debugging and omniscience,
• I/O concerns specific to virtualization,
• Experience reports from deployments of virtualized environments,

In short, the conference is broadly interested in lessons from virtualization that will apply to a wide range of researchers as well as the novel use of virtualization techniques to solve practical problems.

Here are the important dates:

Submission   : November 9, 2009
Notification : February 5, 2010
Camera Ready : March 4, 2010

Detailed submission guidelines and instructions are available on the conference website (http://vee2010.cs.princeton.edu/).

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It was a good read, but nothing in the paper should come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the cloud computing space. Content aside, I had quite a few (albeit, minor) issues with the writing of the paper. I am guessing it might be due, in part, to the long list of authors.

• lots and lots of repetition (such as Table 1 and Table 6)
• sloppy writing in many places, broken sentences, undefined acronyms and such
• you get the idea

But I think the paper does a very good job of laying out the landscape for people who want to learn about cloud computing, and also gives a high “big picture” view for people who are already in this space. I particularly liked the discussions on how to decide whether a move to the cloud is worth it, financially and otherwise.

The list of the top-10 challenges and opportunities is also interesting. I’m always intrigued by how problems can always be distilled down to “top 3″ or “top 5″ or “top 10″ :-) I personally think that debugging distributed systems should have been ranked higher in the list. Data lock-in, and overall visibility/transparency are I think the biggest inhibitors for adoption, especially in the enterprise.

Virtualization is playing a key role in pretty much all cloud computing efforts. But we are far from the “perfect isolation” promise of VMs. I did some work back in 2006 on improving the performance isolation among VMs in Xen and many of those issues still remain.

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