computer science

Remote mobile virtualization

Remote mobile virtualization is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Remote mobile virtualization rather than just read about it. In short: Remote mobile virtualization, like its counterpart desktop virtualization, is a technology that separates operating systems and applications from the client devices that access them. However, while desktop virtualization allows users to remotely access Windows desktops and applications, remote mobile virtualization offers remote access to mobile operating systems such as Android.

Key takeaways

Remote mobile virtualization belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Remote mobile virtualization to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Remote mobile virtualization from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Remote mobile virtualization, like its counterpart desktop virtualization, is a technology that separates operating systems and applications from the client devices that access them. However, while desktop virtualization allows users to remotely access Windows desktops and applications, remote mobile virtualization offers remote access to mobile operating systems such as Android. Remote mobile virtualization encompasses both full operating system virtualization, referred to as virtual mobile infrastructure (VMI), and user and application virtualization, termed mobile app virtualization. Remote mobile virtualization allows a user to remotely control an Android virtual machine (VM) or application. Users can access remotely hosted applications with HTML5-enabled web browsers or thin client applications from a variety of smartphones, tablets and computers, including Apple iOS, Mac OS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Windows desktop, and Firefox OS devices.

Virtual mobile infrastructure (VMI)

VMI refers to the method of hosting a mobile operating system on a server in a data center or the cloud. Mobile operating system environments are executed remotely and they are rendered via Mobile Optimized Display protocols through the network. Compared to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), VMI has to operate in low bandwidth network environments such as cellular networks with fluctuating coverage and metered access. As a result, even if a mobile phone is connected to a high speed 4G/LTE network, users may need to limit overall bandwidth usage to avoid expensive phone bills. Most common implementations of VMI host multiple mobile OS virtual machines (VMs) on private or public cloud infrastructure and allow users to access them remotely via options such as Miracast™, the ACE Protocol or custom streaming implementations optimized for 3G/4G networks. Some implementations also allow for Multimedia redirection for better audio and video performance. Mobile operating systems hosted in the cloud are not limited to Android. Other operating systems like Firefox OS and Ubuntu Mobile can also be used as VM instances depending on uses. Microservers based on existing mobile processors can also used to host Mobile VMs as they provide full GPU access for feature-rich user interfaces. To achieve higher density, VMI implementations can use customized versions of Android that minimize memory requirements and speed up boot times.

VMI use cases Satisfy compliance – VMI helps address data privacy regulations such as HIPAA. VMI minimizes the risks associated with mobile device theft by storing mobile data securely in data centers or the cloud, rather than on end user devices. In addition, with VMI, organizations can control and monitor access to data and can optionally generate an audit trail of user activity. Prevent data loss caused by physical device theft – With the advent of bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, more and more users are accessing business applications and data from their mobile devices. Because VMI hosts mobile applications in the cloud, if a mobile device is lost or stolen, no business data will be compromised. Accelerate app development and broaden coverage – VMI allows application developers to write applications once and use them on all HTML5-compatible mobile devices. Most VMI vendors offer VMI clients for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone as well as clientless, HTML5 browser-based access. Minimize software development costs and addressing mobile fragmentation. Streamline IT operations – With VMI, IT administrators do not need to install, manage and upgrade individual applications on end user devices. Instead, if a new application patch is released, IT can upgrade the mobile application once on a cloud or data center.

Mobile app virtualization

Mobile app virtualization technology separates mobile applications from their underlying operating system using secure containers, and is analogous to RDSH and Citrix XenApp on desktops. Compared to VMI, Mobile app virtualization only virtualizes the individual application and the user session rather than the full mobile operating system. Mobile app virtualization can offer higher density than VMI because one instance of the remote OS can serve multiple users, however the user separation is less secure than VMI and there is less context of a full mobile device. Using secure containers, each user session is isolated from one other and the output of the user session is rendered remotely to the end user. Mobile app virtualization also helps in scaling to large number of users as well as sharing hardware features like GPU and encryption engines across all user sessions as they can be managed by the underlying operating system. Mobile app virtualization is functionally similar to VMI in that both solutions host individual users’ mobile sessions on remote servers; however, it differs from VMI in several important ways:

Mobile app virtualization sessions run in a single shared mobile operating system while VMI provides individual mobile operating system instances for each user Where mobile app virtualization is mainly designed to virtualize individual application sessions, VMI is designed to deliver full mobile environments Mobile app virtualization is transparent to the end user; an end user accessing an application from a different mobile operating system (e.g. iOS) than the hosted operating system (typically Android) will not have to learn a new user interface. However, Hypori has recently bridged this gap in VMI with a seamless apps mode, in which the host OS is hidden from the user. By using one, shared operating system instead of separate operating system instances, mobile app virtualization consumes less resources than VMI. Due to having a single mechanism for user separation (typically SEAndroid policies and containers) as opposed to multiple layers of separation, mobile app virtualization was judged to be less secure than VMI by security expert organizations such as the U.S. DoD. The analysts at TechTarget published a comparison of desktop RDSH (analogous to MAV) and VDI (analogous to VMI), and many of the same observations hold true in comparisons of the mobile equivalents.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Remote mobile virtualization

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Remote mobile virtualization claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Remote mobile virtualization before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Remote mobile virtualization ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Remote mobile virtualization

In research: Remote mobile virtualization appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Remote mobile virtualization in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Remote mobile virtualization is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Centralized computing, Cloud gaming, Remote desktop, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Remote mobile virtualization outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Remote mobile virtualization in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Remote mobile virtualization means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Remote mobile virtualization out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Remote mobile virtualization in simple terms?

Why does Remote mobile virtualization matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Remote mobile virtualization?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Remote mobile virtualization.