On Wed, April 30, 2008 2:23 pm, Joshua Penix wrote: > > ----- "Lan Barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> OK, all you xen bashers from last week -- have at it! > > Xen has its place -- virtualizing many instances of a supported OS whose > kernel can be modified to allow paravirtualization... a.k.a. Linux. It > works really well in that case. > > Where Xen falls down is in virtualizing other OSes. Windows under Xen > works, but the performance is crap unless closed-source paravirtual > drivers for network and disk are installed. FreeBSD is apparently not > very well tested under Xen, or at least is having trouble keeping up with > Xen's rapid development cycle. The BSD problem was the source of the > original Xen rant by Andy. > > Xen and the entire market of virtualization software is "suffering" from > exceptionally rapid growth. This stuff isn't mature yet, and there's lots > of work to be done. Most effort is currently being spent on optimizing > the software and adding features for the most common implementation > situations. Therefore VMware's management tools lean toward being heavily > Windows-centric, since its largest installed base is in corporate > environments where Windows-based management tools are the norm. Xen is > best tested with Linux for both host and guest... the fact that it's open > source lets others like Solaris and BSD get in on the fun, but it's up to > their developers to keep up with Xen. > > As time goes on and the feature sets of all these systems stabilize, then > the APIs and documentation will too. Subsequently more development effort > will be able to focus on what are currently "edge cases," and > virtualization will move toward being an expected feature of every OS and > at some point probably fade into the background as something that "just > works." > >
No better way to ruin a conversation than for people who know what they're talking about to chime in. -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
