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

[Dave Costakos]

Not to mention it costs $3000 ....

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Andrew Cathrow <acathrow at redhat.com> wrote:

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Dennis Jacobfeuerborn" <dennisml at conversis.de>
> > To: "Andrew Cathrow" <acathrow at redhat.com>
> > Cc: "Bill Davidsen" <davidsen at tmr.com>, 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 1:59:54 PM
> > Subject: Re: [fedora-virt] [Fedora-xen] Dom0 xen support in Fedora 15?
> > 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.
> >
>
> Citations are really needed on both sides of the debate, 2 or 3 year old
> metrics no longer apply.
> Vendors published benchmarks are typically questionable, they focus on
> their products strengths and their competitors weakness.
> The only hope for a fair comparison is a vendor neutral set of benchmarks
> such as SPECvirt  http://www.spec.org/virt_sc2010/
> But obviously this isn't a simple test to run.
>
>
> > Regards,
> > Dennis
> --
> xen mailing list
> xen at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen
>



-- 
Dave Costakos
mailto:david.costakos at gmail.com
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