Re: [Xen-users] Using xen with separated hardware configurations

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> We'd like to utilise Xen to hide and enable specific hardware components
> of a computer system for specified operating systems.
>
> We have, for example, an USB-device and a device on the PCI-bus. We'd
> like to run two instances of an operating system (two kernels) on a dual
> Xeon cpu-hardware configuration. Each kernel on one such cpu would be
> nice, of course.

Easily done, just specify the CPU in the config file.

> We would like to make the USB-device usable on two instances of an
> operating system,

What kind of device is it?  If it's a block device or a network device, this 
is already easily doable.  If it's some other kind of device then the sharing 
semantics are less clear.

Xen 3.0 should have the ability to attach an arbitrary USB device to a domain.  
You won't be able to share it simultaneously but there would be nothing to 
stop you swapping the device between the domains as required.

> whereas for the device on the PCI-bus we only want to 
> make it accessible for one of the two instances.

You can do this in Xen 2.0 but it's a little unfriendly at the moment - I see 
you've found some information on this.  Note that once you've givien a domain 
control of a device,on the PCI bus you do have to trust it (and its 
applications) to be non-malicious.

People are using the PCI bus sharing part of Xen very happily "in the wild" to 
allow their guest domains to function as routers / firewalls, Asterisk PBXes, 
etc.

Cheers,
Mark

> Is this (already) possible with the Xen-technology? If so, how to do
> this (where can I find the documentation for it?). If not, is it
> planned? Or do the Xen developers at this moment feel that this
> shouldn't ever be in the scope of the project?
>
>
> Thanks

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users