Re: KVM and Xen

On Sat, 2006-12-30 at 18:15 -0500, Mike Chalmers wrote:
I was wondering if anyone new about these and would explain them to me? Thanks.


Short and simple.
Xen requires (in most cases *) a modified host and guest kernel and uses
its own management tools.
KVM requires certain extensions (Intel VT, AMD Pacifica/SVM **) to be
present on the host CPU and uses the QEMU front-end.

As for what-to-use, well, a couple of questions:
A. What type of guest do you plan to virtualize? Windows? Linux? BSD?
B. Can you used kernel-modified guests?
C. Are you using VT/SVM enabled hardware?
D. Do you require additional features beyond "simple" virtualization?
(E.g. migration, snapshots, etc)

- Gilboa
* Xen does support VT/SVN enabled hardware - but AFAIK it requires more
over-head then KVM.
** Supported CPU cores:
Intel: P4 6xx, D9xx, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Xeon 3xxx/5xxx/7xxx.
AMD: Athlon64 AM2, AMD Opteron s1207/1xxx/2xxx/8xxx.


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