Xen, Squeeze, and Beyond

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Hi folks,

There was a thread here a little while back about the status of Xen in
future Debian releases.  It left me rather confused, and I'm hoping to
find some answers (which I will then happily document in the wiki).

According to http://wiki.debian.org/SystemVirtualization :

"Qemu and KVM - Mostly used on Desktops/Laptops"

"VirtualBox - Mostly used on Desktops/Laptops"

"Xen - Provides para-virtualization and full-virtualization. Mostly used
on servers. Will be abandoned after squeeze."

The Xen page on the wiki makes no mention of this.

So, I am wondering about our direction in this way:

1) Will a squeeze system be able to run the Xen hypervisor?  A Xen dom0?

2) Will a squeeze system be able to be installed as a Xen domU with a
lenny dom0?  What about squeeze+1?

3) What will be our preferred Linux server virtualization option after
squeeze?  Are we confident enough in the stability and performance of
KVM to call it such?  (Last I checked, its paravirt support was of
rather iffy stability and performance, but I could be off.)

3a) What about Linux virtualization on servers that lack hardware
virtualization support, which Xen supports but KVM doesn't?

4) What will be our preferred server virtualization option for non-Linux
guests after squeeze?  Still KVM?

5) Do we recommend that new installations of lenny or of squeeze avoid
Xen for ease of upgrading to squeeze+1?  If so, what should they use?

6) Are we communicating this to Debian users in some way?  What can I do
to help with this point?

Thanks,

-- John