[Fedora-xen] [fedora-virt] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 11/08/2010 06:02 PM, Andrew Cathrow wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Davidsen"<davidsen at tmr.com>
>> To: dlaor at redhat.com
>> Cc: xen at lists.fedoraproject.org, virt at lists.fedoraproject.org, "M A Young"<m.a.young at durham.ac.uk>
>> Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 11:52:08 AM
>> Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
>> Dor Laor wrote:
>>> On 11/08/2010 04:55 AM, M A Young wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am trying to work out whether it is practical to propose Dom0 xen
>>>> support as a feature for Fedora 15.
>>>>
>>>> The kernel situation is that Domain 0 has been accepted upstream
>>>> for
>>>> 2.6.37. Assuming a 3 month kernel release cycle, F15 will most
>>>> likely ship
>>>> with a 2.6.37.x kernel, with 2.6.38 coming out either after the F15
>>>> release or just before but too late to be included. If the plan to
>>>> get key
>>>> xen drivers into 2.6.38 succeeds, then F15 may be become usable as
>>>> a
>>>> Domain 0 system at some point during its lifetime as the kernel
>>>> package in
>>>> a Fedora version typically has one major update.
>>>>
>>>> If the kernel team accept backported patches then it might just be
>>>> possible to ship F15 with usable Domain 0 support but the timescale
>>>> for
>>>> that would be very tight.
>>>>
>>>> The other thing we would need to consider is what needs to be done
>>>> to make
>>>> xen friendly enough to be usable by an ordinary user. The page
>>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0 contains plans
>>>> from
>>>> when dom0 xen support was expected to make a quick return to
>>>> Fedora, but
>>>> they are a couple of years old now so probably need updating.
>>>>
>>>> I think as a minimum we would need a way to add a dom0 enabled grub
>>>> entry
>>>> for a kernel, rather than requiring the user to hand edit the grub
>>>> file.
>>>> We should also make sure that xen works with the other Fedora
>>>> virtualisation tools.
>>>>
>>>> What do others think about this? For example is it achievable as a
>>>> feature, is it too early and better to wait for F16, and what else
>>>> should
>>>> we aim to do to make xen usable in Fedora?
>>>>
>>> Have you consider kvm? it's upstream since 2.6.20 and now its more
>>> ready
>>> than ever.
>>>
>>
>> There are some good tutorials which should explain the difference
>> between xen and kvm, particularly the performance and hardware
>> requirements of each.
>
> re: hardware requirements, KVM's requirement for VT-X/AMD-V extensions certainly used to be a concern 2-3 years ago but today even laptops come with this support.
> And regarding performance they days of Xen outperforming KVM have long-since passed.

Citations needed. I'm not saying what you claim isn't true but without data 
this opinion doesn't carry much weight.

Regards,
   Dennis