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Xen 2.0 Virtual Machine Monitor Released

Posted by michael on from the xen-and-the-art-of-system-maintenance dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Xen team are pleased to announce the release of Xen 2.0, the open-source Virtual Machine Monitor. Xen enables you to run multiple operating systems images concurrently on the same hardware, securely partitioning the resources of the machine between them. Xen uses a technique called 'para-virtualization' to achieve very low performance overhead -- typically just a few percent relative to native. This new release provides kernel support for Linux 2.4.27/2.6.9 and NetBSD, with FreeBSD and Plan9 to follow in the next few weeks. Xen 2.0 runs on almost the entire set of modern x86 hardware supported by Linux, and is easy to 'drop-in' to an existing Linux installation. The new release has a lot more flexibility in how guest OS virtual I/O devices are configured. For example, you can configure arbitrary firewalling, bridging and routing of guest virtual network interfaces, and use copy-on-write LVM volumes or loopback files for storing guest OS disk images. Another new feature is 'live migration', which allows running OS images to be moved between nodes in a cluster without having to stop them. Visit the Xen homepage for downloads and documentation."

7 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Xen 2.0 Koan by gowen · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is the sound of one hand crashing?

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    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  2. Obligotory. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh man, can you imagine the overhead on a virtual beowulf cluster using this?

  3. That's cool... by grub · · Score: 3, Funny


    So from a Linux or Plan9 VM I can watch the BSD VMs die in realtime!

    disclaimer: I love OpenBSD

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    Trolling is a art,
  4. It's not really useful if... by spidergoat2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    It can't run AmigaDOS.

    1. Re:It's not really useful if... by Zorilla · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, I agree. These guys missed a huge user base by completely missing the point of running virtual machines. It looks like I'm still stuck in the mud until someone develops a solution to get all my TRS-80 apps working again.

      (Note to mods: take a joke)

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      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    2. Re:It's not really useful if... by Zorilla · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wow. The reference to the TRS-80 wasn't enough. The line that said it was a joke (to avoid thoughtless troll or offtopic mods) wasn't enough. It looks like whenever I am joking on Slashdot, I need to put the following line at the bottom:

      THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY - THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY - THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY - THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

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      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  5. Re:Alas, no Windows... by ColdGrits · · Score: 4, Funny
    VirtualPC runs Linux like crap. The sound doesn't work and is less than stable.

    Sounds like the emulation is pretty accurate then! ;-)

    (Oh c'mon, lighten up, it's a joke...)

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