Re: [Xen-users] para- and full-virtualization on same system?

["M.A. Williamson" <maw48@xxxxxxxxx>]

>    Based on a few of the follow-ups, I wanted to add some detail:
>      all the machines could be headless (only command-line access is
> needed)
>    we may need real machines for Windows and MacOS if their
> displays
> can't be turned off
OK

>    Kent Watsen wrote:
>          Can I consolidate all my servers to one machine - here are my 
> current machines:
>          OpenBSD (used for external services: dns, http, smtp)
>      OpenBSD (used for internal services: dns, http, smtp, imap,
> ldap,
> smb, nfs, svn, bugzilla)
>      OpenSBD (used for upgrading either of the above servers
> without
> any downtime)
>            OpenBSD (used as a build/test machine)
These would need to run in an HVM (full virt) domain, since OpenBSD doesn't 
have support for Xen. I'm not sure it's as well tested as Linux / Windows 
under HVM, though,
>      FreeBSD (used as a build/test machine)
>      NetBSD (used as a build/test machine)
>      RedHat (used as a build/test machine)
>      CentOS (used as a build/test machine)
>      SuSE (used as a build/test machine)
>      Solaris (used as a build/test machine)
Linux 2.6-based distros can run in paravirt mode. Support for FreeBSD, 
NetBSD and Solaris in paravirt mode is on the way (NetBSD is being updated 
for Xen3, FreeBSD 7 development branch works, Solaris works with partial 
functionality).
>      Windows (used as a build/test machine)
Should run in an HVM partition.

>      MacOS X (used as a build/test machine)
Bzzzt. Due to the restrictions Apple have put in place, it's a little 
doubtful whether you'll be able to run OS X under Xen - even on Apple 
hardware - at the moment.
Some notes: Full virt needs hardware support (a VMX or SVM machine). This 
support is still being optimised (particularly in terms of getting good IO 
performance) and robustified. You may want to consider this wrt running 
your services in HVM - certainly you'll want to trial it for a bit to see 
how well it works for you. You could alternatively (e.g. if you don't like 
the HVM mode of Xen, or you don't want to buy new hardware) run the 
unmodified OSes on a separate machine in something like VMware server (the 
forthcoming Free As In Beer version of GSX).
Provided your hardware supports it, paravirtualisation and full 
virtualisation work fine together on the same hypervisor. Note also that 
you can only run 64-bit paravirt guests on a 64-bit Xen, but that you can 
run 64-bit, 32-bit and 32-bit PAE guests in HVM partitions on a 64-bit Xen 
(if the hardware supports it!).
Hope that answers your questions.

Cheers,
Mark

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