Re: [Xen-devel] Generic Xen

[Mark Williamson <Mark.Williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Is there any plan to create a generic Xen
> that would run autommatically without Vanderpool
> or Pacifica technology or with those techologies if
> either one is present?

I was thinking about your question and I thought of something else worth 
mentioning: it's great that we can fully virtualise a machine with hardware 
support but even so *we're not abandoning paravirtualisation*

We get excellent performance from paravirtualisation and Xen-aware guests are 
likely to have a worthwhile performance advantage.  Using h/w support for 
virtualisation increases the range of Xen awareness we can support in guest 
OSs:

* At one end of the spectrum, you might run an OS under full virtualisation 
(including devices) whilst you are installing and configuring it.
* If available for your OS, you might then choose to install paravirtualised 
device drivers for your OS for improved IO performance.  Nothing outside the 
IO subsystem needs to be aware of Xen, so this is essentially 
"paravirtualisation-lite"
* At the other end of the spectrum, you might instead install a "Xen-native" 
OS kernel (e.g. Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Plan 9) to minimise virtualisation 
overheads as far as possible.

There are other points on this tradeoff spectrum between the two extremes...

Maybe that clarifies where things are headed.

Cheers,
Mark


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