Great look at virtualization

Virtualization: Nuts and Bolts

What I appreciated most about this article was the lack of fluff found in most of the VMWare or XEN docs comparing X or Y and why they're better than the other guy. Johan does a great job of providing a bit of history and background in virtualization (specifically binary translation then paravirtualization) and then explores the Intel VT-x and AMD SVM roles at the hardware level. He discusses memory and I/O challenges that can still be hindrances. It's a long article so if you're not interested in all the gory details, at least check out page 12 for a good look at benchmarking (and what's NOT being benchmarked) and page 13 for a well-summarized conclusion.

Coming away from reading this leaves me anxious for the next article and future enhancements at the hardware level. I'd like to find more articles similar to this one for more information and academic research. Appears there are still great strides to be made to hone efficiency. Fun stuff!