| Nested VMX |
| ========== |
| |
| Overview |
| --------- |
| |
| On Intel processors, KVM uses Intel's VMX (Virtual-Machine eXtensions) |
| to easily and efficiently run guest operating systems. Normally, these guests |
| *cannot* themselves be hypervisors running their own guests, because in VMX, |
| guests cannot use VMX instructions. |
| |
| The "Nested VMX" feature adds this missing capability - of running guest |
| hypervisors (which use VMX) with their own nested guests. It does so by |
| allowing a guest to use VMX instructions, and correctly and efficiently |
| emulating them using the single level of VMX available in the hardware. |
| |
| We describe in much greater detail the theory behind the nested VMX feature, |
| its implementation and its performance characteristics, in the OSDI 2010 paper |
| "The Turtles Project: Design and Implementation of Nested Virtualization", |
| available at: |
| |
| http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Ben-Yehuda.pdf |
| |
| |
| Terminology |
| ----------- |
| |
| Single-level virtualization has two levels - the host (KVM) and the guests. |
| In nested virtualization, we have three levels: The host (KVM), which we call |
| L0, the guest hypervisor, which we call L1, and its nested guest, which we |
| call L2. |
| |
| |
| Running nested VMX |
| ------------------ |
| |
| The nested VMX feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by giving |
| the "nested=1" option to the kvm-intel module. |
| |
| No modifications are required to user space (qemu). However, qemu's default |
| emulated CPU type (qemu64) does not list the "VMX" CPU feature, so it must be |
| explicitly enabled, by giving qemu one of the following options: |
| |
| -cpu host (emulated CPU has all features of the real CPU) |
| |
| -cpu qemu64,+vmx (add just the vmx feature to a named CPU type) |
| |
| |
| ABIs |
| ---- |
| |
| Nested VMX aims to present a standard and (eventually) fully-functional VMX |
| implementation for the a guest hypervisor to use. As such, the official |
| specification of the ABI that it provides is Intel's VMX specification, |
| namely volume 3B of their "Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software |
| Developer's Manual". Not all of VMX's features are currently fully supported, |
| but the goal is to eventually support them all, starting with the VMX features |
| which are used in practice by popular hypervisors (KVM and others). |
| |
| As a VMX implementation, nested VMX presents a VMCS structure to L1. |
| As mandated by the spec, other than the two fields revision_id and abort, |
| this structure is *opaque* to its user, who is not supposed to know or care |
| about its internal structure. Rather, the structure is accessed through the |
| VMREAD and VMWRITE instructions. |
| Still, for debugging purposes, KVM developers might be interested to know the |
| internals of this structure; This is struct vmcs12 from arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c. |
| |
| The name "vmcs12" refers to the VMCS that L1 builds for L2. In the code we |
| also have "vmcs01", the VMCS that L0 built for L1, and "vmcs02" is the VMCS |
| which L0 builds to actually run L2 - how this is done is explained in the |
| aforementioned paper. |
| |
| For convenience, we repeat the content of struct vmcs12 here. If the internals |
| of this structure changes, this can break live migration across KVM versions. |
| VMCS12_REVISION (from vmx.c) should be changed if struct vmcs12 or its inner |
| struct shadow_vmcs is ever changed. |
| |
| typedef u64 natural_width; |
| struct __packed vmcs12 { |
| /* According to the Intel spec, a VMCS region must start with |
| * these two user-visible fields */ |
| u32 revision_id; |
| u32 abort; |
| |
| u32 launch_state; /* set to 0 by VMCLEAR, to 1 by VMLAUNCH */ |
| u32 padding[7]; /* room for future expansion */ |
| |
| u64 io_bitmap_a; |
| u64 io_bitmap_b; |
| u64 msr_bitmap; |
| u64 vm_exit_msr_store_addr; |
| u64 vm_exit_msr_load_addr; |
| u64 vm_entry_msr_load_addr; |
| u64 tsc_offset; |
| u64 virtual_apic_page_addr; |
| u64 apic_access_addr; |
| u64 ept_pointer; |
| u64 guest_physical_address; |
| u64 vmcs_link_pointer; |
| u64 guest_ia32_debugctl; |
| u64 guest_ia32_pat; |
| u64 guest_ia32_efer; |
| u64 guest_pdptr0; |
| u64 guest_pdptr1; |
| u64 guest_pdptr2; |
| u64 guest_pdptr3; |
| u64 host_ia32_pat; |
| u64 host_ia32_efer; |
| u64 padding64[8]; /* room for future expansion */ |
| natural_width cr0_guest_host_mask; |
| natural_width cr4_guest_host_mask; |
| natural_width cr0_read_shadow; |
| natural_width cr4_read_shadow; |
| natural_width cr3_target_value0; |
| natural_width cr3_target_value1; |
| natural_width cr3_target_value2; |
| natural_width cr3_target_value3; |
| natural_width exit_qualification; |
| natural_width guest_linear_address; |
| natural_width guest_cr0; |
| natural_width guest_cr3; |
| natural_width guest_cr4; |
| natural_width guest_es_base; |
| natural_width guest_cs_base; |
| natural_width guest_ss_base; |
| natural_width guest_ds_base; |
| natural_width guest_fs_base; |
| natural_width guest_gs_base; |
| natural_width guest_ldtr_base; |
| natural_width guest_tr_base; |
| natural_width guest_gdtr_base; |
| natural_width guest_idtr_base; |
| natural_width guest_dr7; |
| natural_width guest_rsp; |
| natural_width guest_rip; |
| natural_width guest_rflags; |
| natural_width guest_pending_dbg_exceptions; |
| natural_width guest_sysenter_esp; |
| natural_width guest_sysenter_eip; |
| natural_width host_cr0; |
| natural_width host_cr3; |
| natural_width host_cr4; |
| natural_width host_fs_base; |
| natural_width host_gs_base; |
| natural_width host_tr_base; |
| natural_width host_gdtr_base; |
| natural_width host_idtr_base; |
| natural_width host_ia32_sysenter_esp; |
| natural_width host_ia32_sysenter_eip; |
| natural_width host_rsp; |
| natural_width host_rip; |
| natural_width paddingl[8]; /* room for future expansion */ |
| u32 pin_based_vm_exec_control; |
| u32 cpu_based_vm_exec_control; |
| u32 exception_bitmap; |
| u32 page_fault_error_code_mask; |
| u32 page_fault_error_code_match; |
| u32 cr3_target_count; |
| u32 vm_exit_controls; |
| u32 vm_exit_msr_store_count; |
| u32 vm_exit_msr_load_count; |
| u32 vm_entry_controls; |
| u32 vm_entry_msr_load_count; |
| u32 vm_entry_intr_info_field; |
| u32 vm_entry_exception_error_code; |
| u32 vm_entry_instruction_len; |
| u32 tpr_threshold; |
| u32 secondary_vm_exec_control; |
| u32 vm_instruction_error; |
| u32 vm_exit_reason; |
| u32 vm_exit_intr_info; |
| u32 vm_exit_intr_error_code; |
| u32 idt_vectoring_info_field; |
| u32 idt_vectoring_error_code; |
| u32 vm_exit_instruction_len; |
| u32 vmx_instruction_info; |
| u32 guest_es_limit; |
| u32 guest_cs_limit; |
| u32 guest_ss_limit; |
| u32 guest_ds_limit; |
| u32 guest_fs_limit; |
| u32 guest_gs_limit; |
| u32 guest_ldtr_limit; |
| u32 guest_tr_limit; |
| u32 guest_gdtr_limit; |
| u32 guest_idtr_limit; |
| u32 guest_es_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_cs_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_ss_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_ds_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_fs_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_gs_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_ldtr_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_tr_ar_bytes; |
| u32 guest_interruptibility_info; |
| u32 guest_activity_state; |
| u32 guest_sysenter_cs; |
| u32 host_ia32_sysenter_cs; |
| u32 padding32[8]; /* room for future expansion */ |
| u16 virtual_processor_id; |
| u16 guest_es_selector; |
| u16 guest_cs_selector; |
| u16 guest_ss_selector; |
| u16 guest_ds_selector; |
| u16 guest_fs_selector; |
| u16 guest_gs_selector; |
| u16 guest_ldtr_selector; |
| u16 guest_tr_selector; |
| u16 host_es_selector; |
| u16 host_cs_selector; |
| u16 host_ss_selector; |
| u16 host_ds_selector; |
| u16 host_fs_selector; |
| u16 host_gs_selector; |
| u16 host_tr_selector; |
| }; |
| |
| |
| Authors |
| ------- |
| |
| These patches were written by: |
| Abel Gordon, abelg <at> il.ibm.com |
| Nadav Har'El, nyh <at> il.ibm.com |
| Orit Wasserman, oritw <at> il.ibm.com |
| Ben-Ami Yassor, benami <at> il.ibm.com |
| Muli Ben-Yehuda, muli <at> il.ibm.com |
| |
| With contributions by: |
| Anthony Liguori, aliguori <at> us.ibm.com |
| Mike Day, mdday <at> us.ibm.com |
| Michael Factor, factor <at> il.ibm.com |
| Zvi Dubitzky, dubi <at> il.ibm.com |
| |
| And valuable reviews by: |
| Avi Kivity, avi <at> redhat.com |
| Gleb Natapov, gleb <at> redhat.com |
| Marcelo Tosatti, mtosatti <at> redhat.com |
| Kevin Tian, kevin.tian <at> intel.com |
| and others. |
