TVDc: Managing security in the trusted virtual datacenter

Abstract

Virtualization technology is becoming increasingly common in datacenters, since it allows for collocation of multiple workloads, consisting of operating systems, middleware and applications, in different virtual machines (VMs) on shared physical hardware platforms. However, when coupled with the ease of VM migration, this trend increases the potential surface for security attacks. Further, the simplified management of VMs, including creation, cloning and migration, makes it imperative to monitor and guarantee the integrity of software components running within VMs. This paper presents the IBM Trusted Virtual Datacenter (TVDc) technology developed to address the need for strong isolation and integrity guarantees, thus significantly enhancing security and systems management capabilities, in virtualized environments. It signifies the first effort to incorporate trusted computing technologies directly into virtualization and systems management software. We present and discuss various components that constitute TVDc: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), the virtual TPM, the IBM hypervisor security architecture (sHype) and the associated systems management software.