Xen High-Performance x86 Virtualization Released

Xen Team writes "The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Systems Research Group is pleased to announce the open source release of Xen, a virtual machine monitor for x86. Xen lets you run multiple operating system images at the same time on the same PC hardware, with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. Even under the most demanding workloads the performance overhead is just a few percent --- considerably less than alternatives such as VMware Workstation and User Mode Linux. This makes Xen ideal for use in providing secure virtual hosting, or even just for running multiple OSes on a desktop machine."

The Xen team continues: "Xen requires guest operating systems to be ported to run over it. Crucially, only the kernel needs to be ported, and all user-level application binaries and libraries can run unmodified. We have a fully functional port of Linux 2.4.22 running over Xen, and regularly use it for running demanding applications like Apache, PostgreSQL and Mozilla. Any Linux distribution should run unmodified over the ported kernel. With assistance from Microsoft Research, we have a port of Windows XP to Xen nearly complete, and are planning a FreeBSD 4.8 port in the near future.

"Visit the project homepage to find out more, and download the project source code or the XenDemoCD, a bootable 'live iso' image that enables you to play with Xen/Linux 2.4 without needing to install it on your hard drive. The CD also contains full source code, build tools, and benchmarks. Our SOSP paper gives an overview of the design of Xen, and evaluates the performance against other virtualization techniques.

"Work on Xen is supported by UK EPSRC grant GR/S01894, Intel Research Cambridge, and Microsoft Research Cambridge via an Embedded XP IFP award."

Comments

Interesting ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really surprised they got assistance for windows XP. You'd think that Microsoft would want to stay well clear of anything linked to the GPL.

I guess such assumptions are incorrect, and quite probably a result of reading Slashdot too much!

Not really like VMWare

[javatips]

We have a fully functional port of Linux 2.4 running over Xen

With assistance from Microsoft Research, we have a port of Windows XP to Xen nearly complete, and are planning a FreeBSD 4.8 port in the near future (volunteers welcome!).

If one need to port an OS to make it work within Xen, then I will NOT compare it to VMWare. VMare can run your stock OS on a VM whithout the need to tweak it.

The performance advantage it has over VMWare is probably related to that. By having a few restriction on the OS, they can probably offer better performances.

so its just an extra layer of abstraction?

[ikoleverhate]

So really, this is just an abstraction layer that means even the OS is unaware it's sharing hardware, so in theory theres no way for a malicious user to take advantage of other users. Pretty cool in a boring and limited sort of way. Kudos to the team who did it, I'm sure it's a real technological challenge. Not what the /. headline promised though ;)

Re:MOL for x86?

[tgd]

This would not allow you to run Windows under Linux... it would allow you to run Windows and Linux under Xen, which is not nearly the same thing.

Contrary to the submitter's comments, this product is nothing like VMWare.

Re:Pfff

[kzinti]

In being so quick to chastise the guy for not reading the article, you missed the point. If anything at all needs to be ported, it means that an OS like XP can't be installed on Xen out of the box. It means that a port of the XP kernel has to be completed, and that MS has to authorize the ported kernel to be distributed. For lots of folks, this is not good enough... even assuming that MS ever would allow the ported kernel to be distributed (and then we have to worry about activation issues too). So, while Xen is great for allowing linux users to run multiple distros at max performance at the same time, it doesn't much help someone who wants to run XP, and might never help them. Those folks still have to resort to VMWare or Bochs.

Pfff...

Why Is This So Hard?

[Chasuk]

Is it really that fucking difficult to write an accurate summary?

A person reads the summary, and reasonably thinks:
"Great! An Open Source equivalent of VMware Workstation! Now I'll be able to run multiple OS's on my Desktop machine without the expense!"

Then he reads:

"Xen requires guest operating systems to be ported to run over it..."

This changes the picture dramatically, and should have appeared MUCH earlier in the summary.

Come on, I know this is only Slashdot, but stupidity and dishonesty like this get really annoying.