Dell Considers Bundling Virtualization on Mobos

castrox writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Dell may be considering bundling virtualization on some of their motherboards. No more dual boot or VMs inside the running OS? 'Any way you slice it, though, putting the hypervisor in a chunk of flash and letting it handle loading the OS is the way forward, especially for servers and probably even for enterprise desktops. Boot times, power consumption, security, and flexibility are all reasons to do this ... The big question is: which hypervisor will Dell bundle with its machines? Vance suggests hypervisors from XenSource and VMware as two options, but I think that VMware is the most likely candidate since it seems to be the x86 virtualization solution of choice for the moment. However, if Dell doesn't try too hard to lock it down, this system could easily be modified in an aftermarket fashion to include almost any hypervisor that could fit on the flash chip.'"

Overwhelming Support

[Doc Ruby]

Dell's gonna have a hell of a time supporting these complex features while it's closing down its call centers [google.com].

IBM does this on their iSeries

[dagar]

IBM is already doing this on their iSeries (AS/400). In order to manage it you have to have a Hardware Management Console (an x86 xSeries machine running Linux and their management software). I really think that they have done a good job of the virtualization, it also lets IBM throttle back the CPU. We have a 1000CPW (IBM's performance index) machine that with the Power5 1.5Ghz processor is limited to 43% utilization. In order to get all 100% of the CPU (2400CPW), we would have to pay through the nose.

TPM

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly, this + a mechanism for telling the hypervisor what programs to trust and how, was the original end goal of the whole TPM/palladium movement..

Please, do not make this the only option

[querist]

This frightens me on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start. Unless that hypervisor is burned into a non-rewritable form of storage (e.g. ROM), it will be subverted.

As it has been demonstrated at Black Hat by the illustrious Ms. Rutowska, (as well as being fairly obvious to anyone familiar with hypervisors) a hypervisor is below the OS and can be impervious to the OS's probing, but it still lies between the OS and the hardware.

Properly implemented, this could be a very good thing. With no disrespect intended toward Dell, I suspect that the first several implementations (at least) will leave the resulting systems vulnerable to subversion, and this subversion would be difficult, at best, to detect.

This is an interesting concept, and it could be used for "good", but as the saying goes "the devil is in the details". The idea is good, it is the potential implementation that worries me.

Full Disclosure: I have a Ph.D. (2006) in InfoSec.

Not sure what the big deal is

[Sloppy]

It's easy to see how moving more stuff from the disk to flash is "slicker" and can make things load a little bit quicker (but seriously: how much? I doubt transferring hypervisors, kernels, or boot managers (e.g. grub) from disk is a major factor in boot times). But what's so special about hypervisors? Forget making this "solution" so specific. Just build a few dozen megabytes of disk-like (bootable) flash into the board, and let the user decide if they just want to use it for a hypervisor, or move a whole bunch more stuff into there in an effort to try to get their modern machine boot as fast as an Amiga.

The one thing that it occurs to me that such an answer would really help with, is working around a certain (dumb) Linux limitation. Booting off EVMS is tricky (or at least it was, last time I looked). Move your boot off-disk, then you can EVMS your whole disk.

And what's this about "security?" The article doesn't explain why it mentions security, and that's not a surprise, because there's no reason it would be more secure. As other have pointed out, "security" is obviously being used as a codeword for something very, very different (i.e. having the machine serve someone else's interest (e.g. MPAA) at the expense of the user's interest).

Re:Overwhelming Support

[QuantumRiff]

The Roseburg, OR call center closure really pissed off the town.. They gave Dell an tax exemption, saving them $5mil over 5 years.. They also spent $1mil on other "incentives" and infrastructure upgrades to attract them to the area. As soon as that Tax exemption was over, they closed down the doors.. Just before, they made some of the best techs there go over seas and train their replacements.. The employees were told they were opening up an "additional" call center, not moving theirs.. Apparently, they also were a crappy tenant and trashed the building they were in...

I don't think Dell is going to be selling many more PC's in southern Oregon for a while...

Re:I don't want a hypervisor thanks

[Uruz 7]

Aren't you being a bit selfish? If you don't want Windows or Mac then don't install them. It's likely that your BIOS has support for tons of things which you are not using nor forced to use. And since you're a Linux user, I'm sure you're aware of all the crap that you'll probably never have to enable in the kernel but it's there if you want it.

I'm not really sure what you mean by slippery slope either. Slippery slope to what? More features? I also don't think this is for the desktop market. I couldn't tell from the article but I assume this is meant for server class machines where virtualization is awesome for fairly cheap HA setups and having this come straight from Dell this way makes it that much easier to pitch to a guy with an MBA.

Re:Overwhelming Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it looks like it's only one call center that was closed [forbes.com]:

He said the company announced plans in May to reduce employment worldwide by 10 percent. He said the Roseburg location is the only such center in the United States to close.

And also from the next paragraph it seems that the reason was obvious:

Frink said the closure has nothing to do with a lawsuit filed by employees of the Roseburg center in February, claiming Dell violated federal and state wage and hour laws.