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Xen High-Performance x86 Virtualization Released
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."
> Xen requires guest operating systems to be ported to run over it.
Get me all excited, then pull the rug out from under my why don't you? This is still pretty neat, but it's hardly a replacement for VMWare or Bochs.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... to publish a paper called "Xen And The Art of Virtualization".
With assistance from Microsoft Research, we have a port of Windows XP to Xen nearly complete
They won't release the source for XP, but you can probably get a compiled binary. I just wonder if you'll have to re-register every time you change your virtual hardware.
In the same way that Mac On Linux makes moving people to Linux on a Mac pretty painless (just give them an icon for OSX in a window) this might do the same for migrating Windows users.
The biggest problem with emulators/virtualisation has always been speed. If a system can be set up that runs Linux but can boot XP easily and run fast, that will be a big improvement.
Of course it's not going to be much good for gamers (doesn't look like it can use hardware accelaration) but it's still pretty promising.
Beep beep.
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 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 ;)
Finally I can create a Beowulf cluster without the clutter of all those machines!
So it looks like this is the third (or fourth) free VM for Linux, the others being Plex86 (and a different fork here) and User Mode Linux. Does anyone have a good comparison of these three? I know Zen compared UML on their site but not plex86. I'm not really sure of the differences between them, particularly the different versions of plex86 and UML (Zen explained their virtualization process pretty well on their site). Which is the best choice for different scenarios? It looks like Zen is the winner for running Linux as the guest OS, and the original Plex86 (first link) is the only one which offers a free choice in guest OS's.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
"....and regularly use it for running demanding applications like Apache, PostgreSQL and Mozilla."
That's kinda funny, lumping a web browser in the same category as server apps designed to handle gazillions of users.
Come on, it's not THAT bloated!
This is Cambridge computer lab we're talking about - where Microsoft research have the very next building over.
I live with one of the guys in the systems group and hope to go back there to do my PhD soon, and they do do very cool things there. Microsoft give them all the help they need, because academia is an excellent ideas feeder for the real world. Cambridge, being in a position of power with its serious reputation and fantastic set of minds, gets the benefit of the Microsoft help without any of the assumed costs.
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
Oh, you mean this then?
(sry NYI)
-- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
As I have stated before about Microsoft's purchase of Connectix's Virtual Server technology
The Electronic Frontier Foundation are about to publish a paper criticizing a component of the "trusted computing" technology promoted by Microsoft, IBM and other technology companies, calling the feature a threat to computer users..According to the README, it requires special hardware drivers and is not targetted at desktops. Don't expect stellar graphics performance. VMWare *does* give you something for the money.
Hardware support
================
Xen is intended to be run on server-class machines, and the current
list of supported hardware very much reflects this, avoiding the need
for us to write drivers for "legacy" hardware. It is likely that some
desktop chipsets will fail to work properly with the default Xen
configuration: specifying 'noacpi' or 'ignorebiostables' when booting
Xen may help in these cases.
Xen requires a "P6" or newer processor (e.g. Pentium Pro, Celeron,
Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, Xeon, AMD Athlon, AMD Duron).
Multiprocessor machines are supported, and we also have basic support
for HyperThreading (SMT), although this remains a topic for ongoing
research. We're also looking at an AMD x86_64 port (though it should
run on Opterons in 32-bit mode just fine).
Xen can currently use up to 4GB of memory. It's possible for x86
machines to address more than that (64GB), but it requires using a
different page table format (3-level rather than 2-level) that we
currently don't support. Adding 3-level PAE support wouldn't be
difficult, but we'd also need to add support to all the guest
OSs. Volunteers welcome!
We currently support a relatively modern set of network cards: Intel
e1000, Broadcom BCM 57xx (tg3), 3COM 3c905 (3c59x). Adding support for
other NICs that support hardware DMA scatter/gather from half-word
aligned addresses is relatively straightforward, by porting the
equivalent Linux driver. Drivers for a number of other older cards
have recently been added [pcnet32, e100, tulip], but these are not
recommended since they require extra packet copies.
Silly question about activation .. actually not -about- activation, but inspired by activitation :
... what are the facts?
If you only have a single computer with a single CPU, how many copies of WinXP do you need? That one is rhetorical of course, and the answer is One.
Can you run whatever software on that legitimately licensed WinXP machine that you like, assuming it was also legitimately licensed? That one is also rhetorical and the answer is Yes.
Now install VMware on that machine, WinXP as the host OS. By adding VMware you have not increased the number of CPUs or physical machines. If you created three virtual machines (if you had enough RAM and hard drive space, not a stretch at all) and wanted to run WinXP in each of those virtual machines simultaneously - do you need 1 license of WinXP or four licenses of WinXP (one for the host OS, and one for each VM)?
Granted the activation and active license management in XP may not allow this to happen even if in theory it should be allowed according to the 1 license / physical machine license in the EULA - but swap it with Windows 2000 or whatever
I am just curious.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer