Re: Xen on NetBSD 4.0-RELEASE and Windows HVM

[Jean-Yves Migeon <jean-yves.migeon%espci.fr@localhost>]

Dinesh Nadarajah wrote:
> 2. What is the long term viability of Xen generally speaking? It seems
> to be a little bit more involved in setting up compared to Linux KVM
> and more Linux Distros seem to be avoiding it.
>   
Xen is not supported by vanilla Linux. It is planned to use it through 
KVM, paravirt_ops{} providing some kind of "abstraction" for PV systems.

Xen Linux kernels are patched kernels, maintained by whoever willing to 
do it. As development continues, maintaining the diffs is cumbersome, so 
Linux distros just prefer to wait for mainstream solutions like KVM.

Anyway, I am no fortune teller. Sun has the exact same ambition, 
providing an abstraction and tools, xVM. Each community has its own 
goals regarding PV. From the outside, they do not differ much though: 
only implementations details are relevant.

IMHO, what matters the most are the tools used to administer the 
virtualized systems: KVM is Linux specific, and so is xVM with 
(Open)Solaris. Xen community is developing a set of standardized 
operations (like XML-RPC) to help in virtualized environments. Having 
said that, have a look at libvirt (http://libvirt.org/). Is that what 
you mean with "long term" solution?
> 3. Are there any (preferred) long term virtualization solution for
> NetBSD (like KVM for linux) [My admin wants to move all Unix to Linux
> with KVM]
>   
Huh, I would not consider Xen a short term solution, if that what you mean.

There are many out there, VMWare solutions, Parallels, QEMU, KVM, 
Virtualbox, Virtuozzo... It strongly depends on the granularity you are 
looking for; in essence, netbsd-userland or Solaris zones are 
virtualization technologies.

KVM is just a solution offered by Linux kernel for PV operations. You 
can still use Xen domains and KVM, they are by no means incompatible. I 
suppose that KVM was developed because the linux community wanted to 
have some abstraction layer to use for later PV technologies. Add to 
this the XenSource and Citrix affair, voila...

Cheers,

--
Jean-Yves Migeon
jean-yves.migeon%espci.fr@localhost

"As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously."
B. Franklin