What does it take to write a virtualization host?

Question

I'm not planning on doing this right now, as I don't have the experience in this area to even attempt it at the moment, but I'm curious about something.

If implementing an operating system from scratch, what would it take to build an application like VirtualBox? Not necessarily as user friendly with a nice GUI or anything, but something that is capable of launching other operating systems and allowing you to interact with them?

I've got an idea rolling around in my head about an operating system that uses virtualization for a few key things (probably ideas out there like this already), and I'm just curious what it would take to build it.

Answer 1

There is a version of VirtualBox that is open source. If you want to know what it would take, checking out their source would be a very good start. Also, check out Xen (open source as well).