Virtualizing operating systems for distributed services on networked workstations

Computer applications and operating systems can be augmented with additional functionality by injecting binary code into the boundary layer between them, without tampering with their binaries or recompiling their source. Using this and replaced with virtual bindings. This scheme is called “virtualization.” This research designs and prototypes a virtualizing Operating System (vOS), residing on top of Windows 2000, which injects and manages common off-the-shelf applications with virtualizing software. The vOS makes it possible to build cooperative communities of systems that execute applications and share resources completely non-intrusively, while retaining full application binary compatibility.; This research describes a system that manages the virtualization of the Windows 2000 system resources and applications intercepting Application Programming Interface (API) calls. New functionality and mobility are added to the virtualized resources and applications without their knowledge or involvement. This research also extends our prior results of techniques to perform basic application or process migration with active network connections.; The result of our research is the architecture and implementation of a system that supports virtualization and migration. Several unique solutions were developed in this research, which demonstrates how to migrate general-purpose applications. This research is part of a larger project called Computing Communities (CC) which is building large unions of distributed machines supporting shared resource management for legacy applications.; A portion of this research demonstrates how to virtualize an application's Graphic User Interface (GUI) window, making it possible to relocate the window to a remote machine without the application's awareness of the relocation. Thus a common application's window is replicated, or cloned, onto a display on a remote machine. Then, utilizing API interception principles, the application semantics are applied to the clone window by message flow connection to the original application and control data flow.