Re: [Xen-users] The future of para-virtualization

[Florian Heigl <florian.heigl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

2012/6/9 Niu Xinli <niuxinli1989@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Hi,
>     Para-virtualization outperforms full-virtualization at the cost of
> compatibility. But as hardware grows more friendly to virtualization, the
> advantage of para-virtualization has become not so obvious. Instead, the
> disadvantage has been amplified.  Personally I don't see a future for
> para-virtualization. Maybe para-virtualization still has an attraction to
> small companies who want to build virtualized computing environment with
> low-price or outdated devices. But I want to know the future trend of
> para-virtualization. Will it come to an end in the near future?

To me, hardware-assisted or "HVM" is utterly irrelevant. I need to run
servers, and they need to scale well. I use HVM if I want to test some
windows VM, but mostly that will be on virtualbox anyway.
Out of many 100 Xen VMs I've spun up over time I don't think there was
more than 20 HVM ones. Probably less.
If I use a less efficient technique, it costs my money and wastes
energy for nothing. As of now, I don't believe PV would go away, since
this used mainly not in the small shops, but in the very very big ones
for the same scalability reasons. i.e. imagine you're running
something on the amazon-level. Switching to all-hvm means you'll end
up buying in escess of 10k servers to retain the same total compute
capacity.

I think or hope, at one point we'll probably see a thinner wall
between hardware-assisted and "real" PV modes, i.e. switching to PV
after PXEing or something.
The complexity of PV is still there and problematic, but for
Unix/Linux VMs it's all not that a big deal. Or is it?

Greetings

-- 
the purpose of libvirt is to provide an abstraction layer hiding all
xen features added since 2006 until they were finally understood and
copied by the kvm devs.

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