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In computing, virtualization is the use of a computer to simulate another computer. The following is a chronological list of virtualization technologies.
Timeline
Note: This timeline is missing data for important historical systems, including: Atlas Computer (Manchester), GE 645, Burroughs B5000.
In the mid-1960s, IBM's Cambridge Scientific Center develops CP-40, the first version of CP/CMS. Experience on the CP-40 project provides input to the development of the IBM System/360 Model 67, announced in 1965. CP-40 is re-implemented for the S/360-67 as CP-67, and by April 1967, both versions are in daily production use.
1964
IBM Cambridge Scientific Center begins development of CP-40.
1965
IBM M44/44X, an experimental paging operating system, is in use at Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
IBM announces the System/370 in 1970. In 1972, IBM announces that virtual memory would be made available on all S/370 models, and also announces several virtual storage operating systems, including VM/370. By the mid-1970s, CP/CMS, VM, and VP/CSS are running on numerous large IBM mainframes.
1971
The first System/370, the S/370-155, is shipped in January.
1972
Announcement of virtual memory being added to System/370 series.
VM/370 announced – and running on announcement date. VM/370 includes the ability to run VM under VM (previously implemented both at IBM and at user sites under CP/CMS, but not made part of standard releases)
1973
First shipment of announced virtual memory S/370 models (April: -158, May: -168).
1977
Initial commercial release of VAX/VMS, later renamed OpenVMS.
1979
The chroot system call is introduced during development of Version 7 Unix, laying a foundation for container virtualization.[1][2]
January 1987: A "product evaluation" version of Merge/386 from Locus Computing Corporation is made available to OEMs. Merge/386 made use of the Virtual 8086 mode provided by the Intel 80386 processor, and supported multiple simultaneous virtual 8086 machines. The virtual machines supported unmodified guest operating systems and standalone programs such as Microsoft Flight Simulator; but in typical usage the guest was MS-DOS with a Locus proprietary redirector (also marketed for networked PCs as "PC-Interface") and a "network" driver that provided communication with a regular user-mode file server process running under the host operating system on the same machine.
SoftPC 1.0 for Sun is introduced in 1988 by Insignia Solutions. [1]
SoftPC appears in its first version for AppleMacintosh. These versions (Sun and Macintosh) only have support for DOS.
1990s
1991
IBM introduces OS/2 Virtual DOS machine (VDM) with support for x86 virtual 8086 mode, capable of virtualizing DOS/Windows and other 16 bit operating systems like CP/M-86 [2]
1994
Kevin Lawton leaves MIT Lincoln Lab and starts the Bochs project. Bochs was initially coded for x86 architecture, capable of emulating BIOS, processor and other x86-compatible hardware, by simple algorithms, isolated from the rest of the environment, eventually incorporating the ability to run different processor algorithms under x86-architecture or the host, including bios and core processor (Itanium x64, x86_64, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc.), and with the advantage that the application is multi platform (BSD, Linux, Windows, Mac, Solaris).[3]
1997
The first version of Virtual PC for the Macintosh platform is released in June 1997 by Connectix.
1998
June 15: Simics/sun4m is presented at USENIX'98, demonstrating full system simulation booting Linux 2.0.30 and Solaris 2.6 unmodified from dd'ed disks. [3].
October 26: VMware files for a patent on their techniques, which was granted as U.S. Patent 6,397,242 [4]
February 8: VMware introduces the first x86 virtualization product for the Intel IA-32 architecture, known as VMware Virtual Platform, based on earlier research by its founders at Stanford University. VMware Virtual Platform is based on software emulation with a guest/host OS design that required all guest environments be stored as files under the host OS filesystem.
IBM announces z/VM, a new version of the VM operating system for IBM's 64-bit z/Architecture.
2001
January 31, 2001, AMD and Virtutech release Simics/x86-64 ("Virtuhammer") to support the new 64-bit architecture for x86. [5] Virtuhammer is used to port Linux distributions and the Windows kernel to x86-64 well before the first x86-64 processor (Opteron) was available in April 2003.
June, Connectix launches its first version of Virtual PC for Windows.[6]
July, VMware creates the first x86 server virtualization product.[7]
Egenera, Inc. launches their Processor Area Network (PAN Manager) software and BladeFrame chassis which provide hardware virtualization of processing blade's (pBlade) internal disk, network interface cards, and serial console.[8]Archived July 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
The first version of Virtuozzo, based on OpenVZ, is released.[4]
2003
First release of first open-source x86 hypervisor, Xen. [9]
February 18: Microsoft acquires virtualization technologies (Virtual PC and unreleased product called "Virtual Server") from Connectix Corporation. [10]
February 18: Development begins on QEMU, a free and open-source hardware emulator.[5]
Late 2003: EMC acquires VMware for $635 million.
Late 2003: VERITAS acquires Ejascent for $59 million.
HP releases Integrity Virtual Machines Version 2.0, which supports Windows Server 2003, CD and DVD burners, tape drives and VLAN.
December 11, 2006Virtual Iron releases Virtual Iron 3.1, a free bare-metal virtualization product for the enterprise server virtualization market.
2007
KVM, a virtualization module integrated into the Linux kernel, is released.
January 15, 2007 InnoTek releases VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE), the first professional PC virtualization solution released as open source under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It includes some code from the QEMU project.
Sun releases Solaris 8 Containers to enable migration of a Solaris 8 computer into a Solaris Container on a Solaris 10 system – for SPARC only.
April: VMware releases VMware Workstation 6.5 beta, the first program for Windows and Linux to enable DirectX 9 accelerated graphics on Windows XP guests [11].
August 6: LXC, an OS-level virtualization method for Linux, is released.
The first public build of Kubernetes is released on September 8, 2014.[7] When Kubernetes debuted, it offered a number of advantages over Docker, the most popular containerization platform at the time. The purpose of Kubernetes was to make it simple for users to deploy containerized applications across a sizable cluster of container hosts. In order to offer more features and functionality for managing containerized applications at scale, Kubernetes was created to complement Docker rather than to completely replace it.[8][9]
