Virtualization, the practice of running software on emulated hardware, has emerged rapidly as an important concept in the last few years. The main benefits of virtualization are that hardware resource utilization can be maximized and that resource management is made simpler. However, as virtualization is yet another abstraction layer between the application and the actual hardware, it may also introduce extra overhead.

This chapter deals with the product JRockit Virtual Edition; a new piece of technology that is part of the JRockit product family. Throughout this chapter, the terms JRockit Virtual Edition and the short form JRockit VE are used interchangeably.

JRockit VE enables the user to run Java in a virtualized environment without an operating system, removing large amounts of the overhead typically associated with virtualization. JRockit VE is a separate product that contains the minimum components necessary to run a Java application in a virtualized...