Re: [Xen-users] RHEL xen vs kvm

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 06:57:46AM -0700, Grant McWilliams wrote:
>    On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 5:49 AM, Pasi KÃârkkÃâinen <[1]pasik@xxxxxx>
>    wrote:
> 
>      On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 09:40:39PM +0300, Pasi KÃârkkÃâinen wrote:
>      > On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:03:55AM -0700, Grant McWilliams wrote:
>      > > Ã  Ã On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Pasi KÃ*Ã*ÂrkkÃ*Ã*Âinen
>      <[1][2]pasik@xxxxxx>
>      > > Ã  Ã wrote:
>      > >
>      > > Ã  Ã  Ã On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 11:42:31PM -0700, Grant McWilliams
>      wrote:
>      > > Ã  Ã  Ã > Ã* Ã Ã* On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Jeff Sturm
>      > > Ã  Ã  Ã <[1][2][3]jeff.sturm@xxxxxxxxxx>
>      > > Ã  Ã  Ã >
>      > >
>      > > Ã  Ã  Ã Do you have some benchmarks to prove KVM being faster than
>      Xen HVM?
>      > >
>      > > Ã  Ã Yes, I do. I've been gathering statistics for quite a while
>      because I'm
>      > > Ã  Ã writing a white paper on Linux Virtualization Performance.
>      > > Ã  Ã I'll need to dig them up after I get back from work. The
>      difference is
>      > > Ã  Ã enough to sway the decision if someone was only going to
>      virtualize
>      > > Ã  Ã Windows. If someone were to just use PV though Xen wins hands
>      down.
>      > >
>      >
>      > I'm really surprised if there is a big difference between Xen HVM vs.
>      KVM.
>      >
>      > What software versions did you use?
>      > What kind of hardware?
>      >
>      > I'm sure Citrix Xen guys want to see the results and comment if
>      there's something to tweak :)
>      >
> 
>      Replying to myself..
> 
>      Grant: I'm not sure if you replied to this.. I had some trouble with my
>      email provider
>      getting blacklisted because of some spam problems.
> 
>    My last response was this...Ã  I'm working 110 hrs a week and teaching two
>    college classes. I'll get back to this topic!
> 

Ok. No problems, take your time :)


>    For now. I predict (and you can quote me) that Xen Dom0 will be removed in
>    all big distros in time.
>    Mind you I don't want this because I use it exclusively for my server
>    virtualization needs. The reason
>    for this is if KVM provides 95% of what Xen does and is already included
>    and it's easy for the packagers
>    to maintain then everyone will move to it. Every year at LinuxFest NW I
>    hear the Redhat people complaining about
>    how hard it is to get the Xen patches to work on newer kernels. As of
>    RHEL6 those complaints have gone away because
>    Xen Dom0 support is gone. Suse would probably like to stop doing the work
>    they're doing as well. By the time
>    Xen Dom0 will be in the mainline kernel nobody will care anymore.
> 

See: 
http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2010/05/07/xen-%E2%80%93-kvm-linux-%E2%80%93-and-the-community/

>    I think a shift in mentality is in order. We're not trying to get VMware
>    ESX in the kernel, if we want to use it we download
>    the CD and install it. I think this is where Xen will end up. XCP and
>    XenServer are already there.
>

Yeah, hypervisors are already commodity, so people will focus more on 
high-level stuff.

Building a virtualization platform on Xen is not a problem for 
virtualization-vendor,
since they can choose from the available kernels (and actually there are a lot 
of options today), 
but it might be a problem (atm) for a Linux vendor, who just wants to use the 
'upstream' stuff only.

And when talking about Redhat we have to remember they bought KVM for $105M USD 
or so..

-- Pasi


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