7.2 How Linux can run on zVM

7.2 How Linux can run on z/VM

At its core, the z/VM operating system is a hypervisor. The hypervisor can present virtual copies of the underlying hardware resources that it controls to operating systems running on a virtual machine. Users can run multiple images of other operating systems as "guests" of the hypervisor, sharing the same single set of real CPUs and I/O facilities, as shown in Figure 7-1.

Figure 7-1. Virtualization technology with z/VM. Resources can be virtualized and presented to the user as if each user had his or her own machine.

Any operating system that can run on an S/390 or z/Architecture mainframe can also run under the control of z/VM, that is, in a z/VM-created virtual machine. z/VM faithfully represents the complete mainframe architecture to the guest operating system.

Like any other operating system that runs on the mainframe architecture, Linux runs on z/VM without any further changes.