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Red Hat Pledges 'Integrated Virtualization'
OSS_ilation writes "Red Hat was all about virtualization in a recent announcement for an 'integrated virtualization' initiative with XenSource and chipmakers AMD and Intel. The move was seen as a way for Red Hat to bring its commitment to virtualization technology into 'sharper focus [...] with the release of a product roadmap that includes virtualization technology built into its enterprise version of Linux.' Red Hat's CTO, Brian Stevens, said the move would remove the complex 'rocket science' aspect of virtualization, and drive the technology into more enterprises as a result."
From what I gathered from the article, it looks like Red Hat is porting their distro to the Xen virtual machines and then packaging that with the natively-compiled OS as a virtual machine manager. It's nice to see a distro pick up Xen officially and package it an easy-to-use way, since Xen has very impressive performance. The article or the summary probably should have included a link to the Xen web site, so if you want to know more: the Xen site.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
Refer http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen_(virtual_machine_ monitor).
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
A couple of months ago I was faced with the problem of needing to host multiple domains on one system. I initially considered Xen for my virtual servers need. However when I learned that this solution would not share the memory (each Vserver would have to have its dedicated memory) I decided to try out Linux Vserver. I have been a happy user of Linux Vserver since then.
With Linux Vserver you only run one kernel on your system where with Xen each virtual server runs its own kernel. This presents some limitations for Linux Vserver. For example the guest virtual servers cannot have the network loopback interface lo. But almost all of these I could live without.
Now if I want to start adding more virtual servers I can, without having to worry about running out of memory.
You sound like a bitter, bitter Slashdotter.
This "Fedora's a beta testbed for suckers" stuff is utter crap. Fedora is a testbed not for stability, but for cutting edge technologies that may filter down into Enterprise many months later. And from what I hear, FC5 will introduce some exciting new things. The stuff that goes in isn't generally any more unstable or poorly-built that the pristine sources from which it derives, plus you've got the support of the community and the Bugzilla.
The Fedoras are nice, powerful distributions. Far nicer (and to be honest, I think more polised) than Enterprise. For me, they've got the right balance of modern usability and technical accessibility. Yes, I like cutting edge.
This is no longer true with the use of Intel's VT or AMD's Pacifica CPU features. Xen originally had to have this OS-level hack because of limitations of the x86 architecture making it impossible to completely virtualize. Intel and AMD have solved this. You can buy Pentium 4's with VT *right now* and run un-modified windows guest's on Xen. The AMD M2 and the next set of Intel chips (the core/core-duo's desktop and server cousins) will all support this.