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Xen 2.0 Virtual Machine Monitor Released
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."
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Sigh... how hard would it be to get a license and distribute it as a binary-only module to people like me who'd be willing to pay for it? I'm sure it'd still be less expensive than the existing alternatives.
Otherwise this looks very nice. In fact, I didn't know that there was such a mature free virtual machine available.
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Oh man, can you imagine the overhead on a virtual beowulf cluster using this?
So from a Linux or Plan9 VM I can watch the BSD VMs die in realtime!
disclaimer: I love OpenBSD
Trolling is a art,
Does it work with AMD64? How about with one 64 and one 32 bit OS? The FAQ just says "x86".
It can't run AmigaDOS.
Direct link: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/scr eenshots/index.html
Let's assume you're an ISP and have a few big machines on the racks. Your customers don't want or need that much horsepower but want their webserver (which you maintain) to run under Linux, or NetBSD, or FreeBSD, or whatever.. You can do it.
Let's assume you're a developer and want to test your code under various OSs, now you can do it on the same box in realtime (read: no reboots)
The list goes on and on, it's a great technology.
Trolling is a art,
from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/faq .html
1.3 Which OSes run on Xen?
To achieve such high performance, Xen requires that OSes are ported to run on it. So far we have stable ports of Linux 2.4, Linux 2.6, and NetBSD. Ports of FreeBSD and Plan 9 are nearing completion.
From the FAQ, it states that you can only run OS's ported to it. While this might be great for cluster testing, or software design, this is defintely no VMware replacement. I am slightly disappointed in this, but I can see where it has its place.
Actually, a couple ISPs and datacenters are already working on using Xen for this exact purpose.
:)
http://xen.terrabox.com will be back online in the next 72 hours. You can find a wiki about xen there. One page is available for listing of any companies that offer Xen based virtual servers. So far the customers that i have setup under Xen have been quite impresed with the speed and stability as compared to the traditional virtualized and meta-virtualied linux vhost setups.
Big difference. VMWare is about virtualising a foreign OS. Since VMWare abstracts at the BIOS and hardware level it can run almost all OSes the CPU will support but it takes a large performance hit.
Xen is a VM platform, i.e. it lets you set up multiple virtual machines that run with very little extra overhead. A lot like User Mode Linux, except easier to configure and install.
Here's a typical use case: you want to make a network "security box" that includes firewall, proxy, web server, email, wiki, irc. Now, conventionally you put all these services in the same Linux system (or whatever OS you use). Using Xen you run all of the services in their own virtual machine, so that if the firewall gets compromised, for instance, an attacker cannot get access to other parts of your system.
It's a very useful tool.
Oh, another use case I just thought of too: how about a 'hidden' Linux OS on your Windows box that does all your email, browsing, and other Internet work that you want to keep secure. Click the icon, up pops Mozilla, except it's running in a different virtual OS.
Yup, definitely very useful.
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UML has MASSIVE context switching overhead.
:)
UML runs insidethe host OS and thus is a security risk.
UML doesn't access hardware via native drivers (PCI hardware that is).
UML is DOG slow compared to xen domains for IO.
I could go on. UML is/was a good solution, but if you wanted a BSD, plan9, or other OS trunnign on the same hardware as linux, forget it.
Under Xen, you can run 1 domain that uses hda, hdb, and the USB stuff directly, a second accesses a second IDE set at hde and hdf and a second PCI video card.
Remembers, xen isn't about just launchign another OS, it's about splitting up the hardware in a secure fashion.
GPLed virtualization software that according to the benchmarks achieves performance unseen in current approaches - sounds like a dream come true.
..) should give a fair picture of the overall performance hit for the virtualized systems.
:)
It would be astonishing if those benchmark numbers hold true in a production environment, which might well be as the selected benchmarks (SPECint, Postgres, Apache,
Being able to partition your OS without serious performance implication would open a whole lot of new possibilities for developers that previously where only possible with huge investments in high-end hardware and expensive virtualization software licenses.
I've already decided: My price for the most useful opensourced application in 2004 goes to..... Xen
Does anyone actually use Plan9?
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I've been wondering for years whether this would be feasible, but my idea was to thread each OS to a different processor. That said, I've never known assembly and have no idea whether I'm being painfully naive here.
Yes, yes... MS bought out Virtual PC. That was a sad day. There's also VMWare and Virtuozzo if you're looking for any way to "run" 2 OSes at once. I'd have to say that VMWare and VirtualPC are in a class seperate from Xen if for no other reason than performance.
Xen is designed to run the client operating system as peers. No single vm can steal the whole machine away from the others and the performance overhead of the virtulization is almost nothing as indicated here. No Virtual PC in that graph but in my experience VMWare performs slightly better than Virtual PC and my observations are supported by these guys. VMWare and VirtualPC run the OS as just another processes in the real OS. Something terrible happens to the host OS and the VPC/VM slows to a crawl. Something major happens in the virtual OS and the host slows to a crawl. They're more emulation that virtualization.
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With this software you can simulater your very own super computer.. thats absolutely great..
Big glue gene or what ever prepare to die..
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I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Plan 9 from outer space??
Not quite. Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
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They have ported linux and in for virtual hosting it's what matters. It serves its purpose perfectly right.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
thankx, that was sorta the summary i was looking for. :)
And whoever modded this offtopic probably confused this UML with the other UML
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" A port of Windows XP was developed for an earlier version of Xen, but is not available for release due to licensce restrictions."
Awe, shucks.
Xen? I hated that level - too much jumping. Oh, wait, this is something else, isn't it?
I musn't be a mainstream Linux user anymore by the looks of it, because I don't want to run a virtualised version of any MS products.
I think mainstream Linux is still in the server space, and I think Xen (and qemu and UML) in those environments would be very useful.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
both have a server version too, which is quite different than what you describe.
they're called virtual server and gsx server iirc (too lazy to look them up)
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This is extremely useful!
For example, I host my websites with host provider. I'd like to install tomcat and run some JSP/J2EE. The application I'd like to run won't work in a hosted environment, where I share my server space with hundreds of other users in virtual domains. I need my own server, but that's cost-prohibitive.
So if I want to run that app, I have to get a hosted server and set it up. My provider has to rack another server and I have to pay quite a bit extra to get it. Not anymore, now my provider sets a virtual server for me on a single piece of hardware that I share with others.
There are any number of apps out there that just won't play well in a virtual domain environment, and yet don't justify dedicated servers either.
On top of that, according to the install guide, the virtual machines can be moved on the fly(!) to other physical hosts, allowing for balancing and perhaps cluster services. If one piece of hardware becomes overloaded, a new host can be setup and the heavily-loaded guest moved to the new host, incurring no downtime in the process.
Heck, we incur downtime and alot of work to move apps to newer, beefier hardware. Imagine if you could move your app on the fly to new hardware? If you setup all of your servers to run as guest OS in Xen, even if there is only one guest per server, you still benefit for being able to migrate on the fly.
Timbert
Sorry that I wasn't clearer; I meant that mainstream computer users won't adopt linux until it is able to run the applications that they rely on.
And no, right now wine and codeweavers don't cut it (I can just imagine telling someone "yeah, here's a free operating system for ya, you just have to pay to run anything you need to run" LOL!)
Many people already own a copy of Windows 98. Most of the PCs that currently exist were sold with a copy of it, I believe.
How about my Xen with no jumping puzzles? :-)
The word 'Xen' does seem to be a bit overused - maybe not as closely as 'Phoenix' or 'Firebird' were for Mozilla, but it's still pretty bad, even if the virtualisation Xen has reached the top of the pile...
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Zen? I hated that starship computer. Orac was alot cooler
Who in their right mind would ever consider putting a firewall, email, web server, and IRC on the same box? A *firewall* for God's sakes. I wouldn't put that combination together on any one box, even with Xen 2.0.
Oh, another use case I just thought of too: how about a 'hidden' Linux OS on your Windows box that does all your email, browsing, and other Internet work that you want to keep secure. Click the icon, up pops Mozilla, except it's running in a different virtual OS.
Sounds more like a job for VMWare.
-matthew
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Xen uses virtualization (not emulation) to run multiple processes. It allows the vast majority of code to run natively on the processor. It is not portable. It is, however, very fast: usually within a few percent of native speeds.
Xen works by modifying the source of the operating system. That allows them to have a much more lightweight virtualization system that is also faster. But that's why you can't run Windows.
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VMware GSX server isn't that much different from VMware workstation, except you don't need to run the GUI to boot the VMs - I have 8 VMs (including my main PDC) booting on a dedicated machine (it's cheaper to pay for VMWare GSX + a 2GB Shuttle than buy 8 PCs, by a long way). They all fire up on bootup, and the remote console lets me log onto them as needed.
I believe ESX server is something different, but having never seen it (you can't even get a demo without waving money in their face) I couldn't be certain.
For fucks sake! If you're going to pay for Windows 98 you might as well also pay for VMWare.
On the other hand if you're going to pirate Windows 98 you may as well also pirate VMWare.
VMware is hundreds, read that again: hundreds of dollars; windows 98....isn't.
Also, the version which I'm using is an upgrade version I have which came with a used laptop I paid $50 for a couple years back. When it asks for the windows disks I'm upgrading from, I throw in the windows 3.1 disks I've had sitting around since 94.
As far as vmware goes. vmware will not switch to fullscreen mode because of weirdness with DGA under X which I could not fix even after spending a fair amount of time googling for it; that alone puts it in the not-for-thirty dollars camp, and definately not for hundreds of $$$.
According to the Xen FAQ, (question 1.4, the one about Microsoft Windows) "virtualisation features in next-generation CPUs should make it much easier to support unmodified OSes". Does anyone know what virtualisation features they're talking about?
QEMU is a similar open source project. It's supposed to run unmodified versions of Windows even. Does anybody know what QEMU's lastest performance numbers are?
ESX Server is a modified RedHat 7.x? distro (when I used it, 1 year ago) that you put guest VM images in. So no VMWare server installed on top of a host OS. It is the OS and server in one. It is pretty slick. I just sent an email to the VMWare sales staff that we were interested in their ESX product. They gave me a 60 day license to try it out. Maybe it helps that I work for large multi-national company with a blue tinge...sometimes. :-)
For what it's worth, I've had this problem before. You can switch to fullscreen in VMware, but only after you edit the module section of your XFree86/X.org config file as appropriate.
ESX Server does not run inside a host OS. It run directly on that hardware.
I want to load my next-gen CPU up with the 2007 version of this, and concurrently run every x86 OS ever written, hosted under Linux of course.
Performance will probably bog down after the first few dozen OSes are loaded. Even Linux has its limits LOL.
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There is much much more to it than this though. :) If you go read the xen faq I'm certain that you will grasp the significance of this. Xen is a whole new area of virtualized machine software.
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Couple of changes at VMware you might be interested in:
1) VMware workstation is now a lot cheaper (I believe around ~$150).
2) In the new 5.0 version, I believe they've switched to using Xvidmode instead of DGA (at least, that's what the current 5.0 beta is using).
I had suggested VMware, but this might be better (performance and price).
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Google for "beos vmware" (without the quotes) and you'll find messages from lots of people who have tried it, some successfully, and what they did to get it to work. I've seen it run, though I'm not sure which version of BeOS it was.
I use http://www.colinux.org/ to run linux inside windows 2000/XP. It is free and a lot faster than vmware. You can even download a debian image for a quickstart.
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Are there any similarities between this and what IBM does on their mainframes?
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Don't forget Xen does live migration and suspend / resume of virtual machine, which (AFAIK) UML does not.
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While its nice to be able to run virtual UNIX boxes, being able to run multiple instances of windows server would be great ..
:)
Their site mentioned getting XP running, but I don't see the average Joe being able to get a hold of such a modified beast.. ( and server is more useful then a workstation product anyway )
Oh, and a bsd host would be nice too since I'm making a list
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Also AMD they have something:l ay/200409121 13927.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/disp
Matt
Really, what has the average consumer really seen come out of Microsoft Research? Not much.
The paranoid would almost think it's a place to stuff smart people so they aren't working for someone else.
Personally I think the intentions are good but Microsoft just doesn't seem good at turning a good idea into a practical product.
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I'm looking to do exactly what User Mode Linux claims to be for, but it seems like Xen does it too. Which is more reliable? Faster? Easier to install?
Basically I want just slightly more functionality than a chroot jail - I want to be able to run a service on a virtual filesystem (ie, a filesystem that exists as a file) with an linux OS version that may vary from the host OS (ie, I can upgrade one service without having to do them all at the same time) I want a compromise of one service to have minimum security implications for the others. And I want to be able to move a service/virtualmachine from one physical machine to another with a minimum of hassle.
Thanks in advance!
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With this software you would, in theory, create a gimpy cluster from a formidable super computer.
That's fantastic!
Correction: It runs in user space (hence the name). It can run as any user (i.e. doesn't have to be root). So that makes it as much (or less) of a security risk as any other program: perl, apache, postfix, etc.
I can just imagine telling someone "yeah, here's a free operating system for ya, you just have to pay to run anything you need to run" LOL!
I'm curious to know the extent of your "virtualisation" of Win98, in the sense that is your goal to allow the user to run all their previous Win98 applications ?
The reason I ask is that if it is, then, as much as I'm completely pro-Linux (I don't run anything else), I'd wonder if you are doing your end-users a disservice. If you going down that path, then Linux just becomes a somewhat unnecessary overhead, as I can't see how the users will transition to Linux when all their applications are running under Windows 98, even though it is on a virtualised box.
I think there are two important criteria for a transition to Linux to be successful.
Firstly, around 50% or more of the applications the end-user is going to run need to be native Linux applications. If they aren't, then I'd think there is still too much "gravitational mass" pulling the user back towards Windows.
Secondly, moving between the native and non-native applications, and moving or switching between the native and non-native data needs to be simple for the end-user. Again, if it isn't, the end-user will probably just want to stick with what they know, the non-Linux solution.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
You CAN get a free demo for ESX Server if you can convince the VMWare sales staff that your project has the $$$ for a license. If you don't work for the IT department for a Fortune 500 company, though, it's probably not even worth trying.
Anyway, I'm evaluating a copy for a server consolidation project, and I'm impressed so far. It seems faster and more stable than GSX, the virtual SMP and "virtual switch" technology is a great addition, and the web administration is amazingly simple to use. I'm not sure if it's worth the $8,000 license fee, but I'd recommend it anyway.
Hi TimMann,
When you are at work how about having a chat to the guys about FreeBSD host support.
I currently run a very old 2.x version on VMWare and would like to BUY and be able to run your latest products.
From the ports collection there is version 3.x of VMWare running under linux emulation but I can't buy any liscences for 3.x. I was reading one post on a newsgroup a while ago that suggested that you have to resort to finding liscences on warez sites if you want to get it running.
With version 5.3 of FreeBSD looking like it will become a stable branch soon I'd really like to buy a dual opteron machine with the new SMP enhancements and run a XP virtual machine for developers that have to use the occasional windows tools.
Now what we need is a guide to bootstrapping Xen & our favorite linux distributions.