Re: [Pkg-xen-devel] Xen status in lenny?
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 09:24:08AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > On 15/07/08 at 14:01 +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> > - KVM: is very promising but is it really a valid alternative *now*
> > for current Xen users?
>
> That is an interesting question. We are doing some research on that
> topic right now. I've migrated some VMware and xen stuff on my own
> workstation to KVM, with highly encouraging results. That is, of
> course, different than a server situation, but a data point nonetheless.
>
> We have been happy with Xen in principle, but there have been enough
> strange things happen over the past year or two that we're not entirely
> comfortable with it anymore. These things include the hypervisor
> crashing on creation or removal of a domU, strange kernel oops in domUs,
> and severe brokenness of pciback.
>
> It should be noted that KVM does not include PCI backend support, though
> with the degree of brokenness of it in Xen, that may not be an issue.
> Also, KVM requires hardware virtualization support, which Xen does not.
> So it is not entirely a drop-in replacement.
>
> The fact that Xensource is supporting 2.6.18 only, and that work on KVM
> is integrated into the kernel upstream, is a strong argument to us for
> converting to KVM. Unless something changes drastically with Xen's
> kernel support, I can't see us doing anything but KVM long term.
>
Xensource has a developer working on getting xen patches ported to Linux
pv_ops framework and integrated into upstream (vanilla) kernel.
Vanilla Linux v2.6.26 already contains 32bit (PAE) paravirtual domU support
with SMP, framebuffer, memory ballooning (contraction only) etc..
More features are being currently prepared for 2.6.27.. including 64bit domU
support, save/restore/migration etc..
Atm biggest (most important) missing feature from vanilla kernel is dom0 support..
See: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenParavirtOps
So in short the situation is getting better slowly..
At the moment "full" Xen feature set is only available in xensource 2.6.18
kernel.
-- Pasi
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