Re: KVM and Xen

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 12:30 -0500, Mike Chalmers wrote:
On 12/31/06, Gilboa Davara <gilboad@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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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Gilboa here is the answer to your questions. I would like to use KVM,
if it is possible? Thanks.
A. Windows
B. don't know
C. don't know (I am using a P4 3.0 ghz 800 mhz HT 478)
D. don't know

AFAIR the 478 P4 doesn't include the required VT extensions.
As such, only QEMU or VMWare Player/Server can be used to run unmodified
guests. (Read: Windows)
Both are free.
QEMU is slower, but GPL.
VMWare is (much) faster, but it's close source and as such, if it
breaks, your own your own. *

- Gilboa
* Though in my experience, VMWare server is pretty stable.


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