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My point is that Amazon has a choice to run their cloud on technology derived from either Xen or KVM. They may have started with Xen because it was the first to market, or a superior technology, or free, but whatever the reason I presume they have chosen it over competitors. And they've likely done far more analysis than I have of the virtualization market. I've done my own limited evaluation of the products, but I also put stock into what I hear and see from others.

I didn't mean to imply with my original post that Amazon built their cloud on Xen's tools. We know they use at least the hypervisor and Linux kernel, and these may or may not be extensively modified, I don't know. The user space tools to manage Xen deployments are bare bones in the community edition, so many users have either bought/downloaded alternative management tools, or created their own. Amazon clearly put a lot of effort into the design and implementation of their cloud, and I presume anyone creating their own cloud will do the same.

When I think of the Xen/KVM arguments I usually consider the architectural design issues and the features and performance of the core components (kernel, hypervisor). Management tools are important, but not an interesting point of debate to me since one technology doesn't necessarily have much of an advantage over the other in that regard, and layers like libvirt tend to make the tools agnostic anyway. It's like debating the merits of two different operating systems based on the design of the kernel. Operating systems need much more than a kernel to succeed in the market, but it's not a stretch to claim the kernel is the most important component.

From: Scott Damron [mailto:sdamron@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 4:09 PM
To: Jeff Sturm
Cc: admin@xxxxxxxxxxx; Xen User-List
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] KVM vs XEN source

You mention Amazon as using XEN like it is some off the shelf XEN install. It is definitely not. The same goes for 3Tera/CA. Sure, they use XEN, but that stuff is no where NEAR the stock XEN software. When people pimp the fact that Amazon or some other large institution uses XEN, it makes everyone believe that they can have a setup like those mentioned above with little to no effort. Please justify that type of comment when you make them.

Thanks!

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Jeff Sturm <jeff.sturm@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Xen has some very large deployments (Amazon EC2). It's not easy to say what kind of market share KVM has these days, assuming a minority of all Red Hat customers actually use it. I think it's fair to say KVM has an uphill battle to fight with the likes of Xen and VMWare on the market. Ultimately if both products are very good, small margins of performance won't matter to most users.

Red Hat took a big gamble on a niche virtualization technology, since in my opinion they don't have the market muscle to make KVM a dominant player. Time will tell how this works out for them. I've also seen posts from people saying (in effect): "You should try out KVM, it is very good." I believe they're probably right. The problem for KVM supporters is they haven't given me any reason to switch. (And before someone mentions it, I don’t count dom0 support as a reason, since I have no business requirement to run RHEL 6 on each piece of hardware I own.)

From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 2:09 PM
To: 'Xen User-List'
Subject: RE: [Xen-users] KVM vs XEN source

Given enough effort, anything is possible. At this point in time, I definitely think Xen is better than KVM. If Xen development stalled and KVM development continued to move forward, KVM could become better at some point in time. Predications tend to be tricky, though. About 50 years ago, everybody assumed we would all drive flying cars by now.

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bruno Steven
Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 10:12 AM
To: Xen User-List
Subject: [Xen-users] KVM vs XEN source

Hi Dear,

I read in foruns , sites especialized that KVM will be better than XEN sourcer on next years. It is possible ? Somebody has some link that bring comparation beteween Xen souce and KVM ?

Thank very much

--
Bruno Steven - Administrador de sistemas
LPIC-2 / MCSA-Windows 2003 / CompTIA Security+

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