But they don't hold the AA meets at the local rubbish dump, sewage treatment plant, or worse... the local water hole. If they did, people would complain. Perhaps it isn't the same thing, but there is a point where the courts demands may be unreasonable. Personally, I feel that running Windows is promoting piracy. Sorry, but most Windows software is closed-source and commercial. If he must run that software, then he will be as most people are, stuck pirating it. His choice of running Linux, as ironic as it was, means that he is probably less guilty of piracy than the average world citizen. The majority of home users, honestly, cannot afford the TCO of a MS Windows environment and pirate their software.
Secondly... If the government feels that monitoring is necessary, that it should only be to prevent further software pirating. They should not be requiring significant changes in his ability to use his computer. If they *must* force someone to change their computing habits then making them run Linux would be much more effective than forcing them to run Microsoft Windows.
For all you skeptics out there: If this means that Xen is going closed source, we still have KVM. KVM is growing features faster than any other VM AFAIK. And if Xen stays open source, then all is good anyway.
First of all, Xen is its own operating system, it does not depend on Linux -- as does KVM, which is a part of Linux. They're both free software, which is great, but Xen does offer one to run a 'dom0' on NetBSD or OpenSolaris. For the latter alone, I could see Sun keeping Xen going -- even if XenSource dropped updating the opensource branch. (Solaris has jails but this is *not* the same thing) IBM has also expressed interest in Xen, although their interests lie in Linux, so they may not be opposed to shifting to KVM.
Secondly... Xen is very well matured compared to KVM, which only in January added support for paravirtualization. Personally, I have tens of machines running Xen for my business and even on such a "small scale" and wouldn't even consider moving to KVM in its terribly immature and feature-poor state.
Finally... Many companies have already deployed Xen and developed their infracture around it (including developing automation routines, etc). I can see a least a handful able to dedicate some development resources. It might not be as great as having a company behind it, but it would be enough perhaps to keep it stable until something else (maybe KVM) catches up.
What I would like to know is how is it that AMD got it's ass handed to itself so viciously by Intel with the Core 2, and yet STILL isn't even remotely close to having something that can compete?
As I see it... The memory bandwidth limitations on Intel's FSB are so restricting that for many applications it matters little how many cores or threads their CPUS can push. The reality is that Intel's chips cannot push memory around fast enough for those processors to be worthwhile. Rather than a dual quad-core system with Intel processors, get a quad dual-core system with AMD processors. You still get 8-cores, but you also get a whole lot more memory bandwidth.
Here is some perspective for Windows users...
Which of the following sounds illegal with Microsoft Windows?
a) Distributing a Windows application that can run on Microsoft Windows.
b) Distributing a Windows application and including a copy of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 in that distribution.
The claims made that vmserver violates Linux copyright are similar to the latter (b). Linux actually provides a facility, the GPL, which actually says that you can do (b) under certain circumstances. Specifically, (b) is legal as long as the source code is unmodified, or that any and all source code modifications are made available. If vmware does (b) with the modification of source code, and does not make available those changes, then they are in breach of copyright.
We're majorly off-topic here, so I'll make it short (and anonymous)... don't make assumptions just because it isn't on the website, or because the price is low:) This website was built by a systems administrator with no design experience (myself). As for technical questions, contacting sales should get you answers.
Whoops, should've used "preview", I'll just avoid the links this time... vpschoice.com provides a list of a number of inexpensive providers, although it is not all-inclusive. There is also a list on the Xen Wiki, and probably on the OpenVZ wiki too. Webhostingtalk.com can be a good resource, but be careful there... And personally, I'm associated with VPS Village (vpsvillage.com)
I'm not very active -- the standard desk jockey, but I have a high metabolism and I *used* to be very active, though it has been nearly a decade since I stopped being actively athletic. That said... I'm 5'11, 185lb but sometimes up to 195lb, that puts me around 25-27 BMI with a blistering 10-14% body fat. Surely, I could lose some weight, I've lost the "6-pack" I had a decade ago, but I'm not over-weight by any stretch of the imagination.
As others have said... BMI is pretty useless. I don't consider myself overweight, and according to my body fat.. I'm between "athletic" and "fit" (which are both below "normal"). Yet, with such a plan, I would have to pay a premium??? Silly.
The "adapters" that I have are active converters with electronics inside as you describe, but that doesn't solve the "KEYDOWN timeout" that I'm describing -- unless there are circuits out there that don't have this limitation. ( I don't doubt it, but I don't plan to purchase every one on the market until I find one that works well)
Except that the Model:M isn't compatible with all of the PS/2->USB adapters and those adapters, well, quite frankly -- suck.
For instance, with my adapter, when I'm holding shift or ctrl for 5 seconds, it silently "forgets" that I'm holding the key. This is annoying when I'm paging in xterm (shift+page[up/dn]), hunting for a lost session in screen, etc. For games its beyond annoying, as your keyboard casually "forgets" that you're walking forward every 5 seconds.
Shared hosting is fine for static html, it's a security nightmare for modern web apps.
Though perhaps rare, there are providers that are very keen on security on shared hosts. I do agree though that there are likely many companies for which this is not true. It is a shame, though, that the majority of bad apples spoils it for the few good ones;-)
For every inexperienced or negligent VPS admin, there is one who is more experienced or diligent than typical hosting company employees. The issue for VPS providers then is to effectively segregate the inexperienced and the idiots.
Good switching policies can keep things in order and make sure that VPS owners don't step on each other's toes. Offering different pricing tiers can help as well. It often seems that the big enterprise places can be the toughest to deal with, but they also tend to pay more. Not that their staff isn't brilliant, they can be, but they're just doing their jobs. On the other hand, the passionate hobbiest will tend to put time into doing things right.
True virtualisation will cause the opposite effect - people will buy less hardware.
Perhaps, though for myself, this is untrue. I run a hosting provider. Back in the day, we simply needed a few large hosting machines and that was sufficient -- providers could pile accounts onto machines. Even medium-sized companies could get by with less than 10 shared-hosting servers.
However, that has changed with VPS... We can only fit a few customers onto each machine. The more customers we have, the more virtual machines we have, the more resources we require. However, you're right about one thing - we will be buying less hardware. Advances in multi-core processors will mean that we will be needing less space... for now.
Currently my company could upgrade 20 servers from single-core to 8-core, plus load our systems with 32 GB of ram for much less than it would cost us to buy 160 single-core machines. Our savings would be not necessarily to Intel/AMD (we would pay a bit more) but in the amenities: kvm units, kvm cables, switched power distribution units, air-conditioning units, generators, UPS units, power, and staffing (someone has to put that stuff together!)
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that we're not gonna see 16-core machines for some time on x86, for any reasonable price, though it might be possible already today. I wouldn't mind seeing a quad 4-core x86 processor system with 64GB of ram.
Re:Virtualization can't protect from the OS
on
Virtual Containerization
·
· Score: 2, Informative
> What do you run the virtual machine on - an OS!!
Unless you're running Xen, unless you consider Xen an OS. But this brings us back to the question, "what is an OS?"
Xen is a kernel for managing virtualized guests, it sits at Ring-0 where traditional OS normally resides. Xen requires that a single guest machine is setup to be booted by default, which will receive special priviledges for purposes of managing Xen. This special guest is called the "dom0", but is for all other intents and purposes -- just another virtual machine.
> Personally I like the approach of OpenVZ and VServer better.
They are yet different solutions for different problems. Obviously there is much overlap in all of the virtualization solutions, but these glorified chroot solutions are certainly a different breed.
The advantages for OpenVZ and VServer are exactly their disadvantages. There can be advantages to having dedicated disk and ram resources, rather than shared resources as you have with OpenVZ and VServer. Furthermore, you're tied to having a single kernel for all your guests.
I think that the "shared resources" model of OpenVZ and VServer are a little scary to enterprises as it can make planning and troubleshooting more difficult (avoiding over utilization, determining bottlenecks, etc). For web hosting, I know that many hosts love the shared resources -- more accounts! Obviously, though, this is only another way for the host to oversell. With Xen, there is no such thing as over selling, except perhaps on cpu and disk performance (but not on capacity)! This is why my hosting company only offers Xen accounts, we give customers the satisfaction that do not oversell capacity -- we couldn't if we wanted to!
Still, I think that there are definate uses for VServer and OpenVZ. Obviously, they will remain a staple of web hosting firms for some time, even with Xen creeping into the low-end of the market. However, I do see enterprises using it too, but more for security hardening than for server consolidation. On the other hand, I see Xen more useful for server consolidation than for security hardening. (Where by security hardening, I'm referring to separating apps between virtual machines.) I see both being useful for getting rid of the "one app per server" model that has hit some enterprises, depending on the apps in quesiton. For instance, I think a larger mail server would do better underneath Xen than it would underneath OpenVZ, but a BIND/Named server might do better underneath OpenVZ/VServer. My opinion for this comes from the capacity overhead of running a virtual machine in Xen is already higher -- this overhead increases when used for very-small guests (such as many Bind installations); on the other hand, Xen is very good for large guests, needing much ram and disk, such as one running a very active mail server.
One interesting thing to note is that there is a Debian package containing patches for both Xen and VServer so there is no reason that they cannot be used together.
Each of Xen, KVM, lguest, and UML can be considered virtualization products but they are all vastly different. Below I describe each of these products in relation to their inclusion to the Linux kernel.
Xen - the Linux kernel supports code allowing it to be run as a guest underneath the Xen kernel, all through software. Linux's support for Xen does not make Linux a virtualization platform, only a GUEST for the Xen kernel which sits at Ring-0. (though a "dom0" Linux system can interact intimately with the Xen kernel, it actually sits at Ring-1). I should note that the Xen kernel also supports hardware virtualized domains, though this is unrelated to the patches to Linux.
KVM - the Linux kernel supports virtualization of guests through hardware extensions, this requires supported hardware. Linux becomes the Ring-0 kernel.
lguest - (my understanding is) an unmodified Linux kernel can act as a hyper-supervisor through loading Linux kernels as modules. Linux sits as both Ring-0 (supervisor) and Ring-1 (guests). This is experimental with limited features and only supports Linux guests.
UML - the Linux kernel becomes a userspace program. This allows Linux to run as an executable application/program. With UML, Linux can be compiled for a Linux or Microsoft Windows target. The executing OS sits at Ring-0 and the UML program sits at Ring-1. This has the advantage of requiring no modifications to the host OS and is very portable (you could email an entire Linux system to a friend without requiring anything installed to their system), but the disadvantage of poor performance.
From a high-level, the products UML, Xen, and lguest are actually very similar in function. They act as architectures to which Linux can be compiled in order to make it a guest OS of another Ring-0 kernel. These architectures provide the targets of a kernel module (lguest), a userspace program (UML), or a xen-domU guest (Xen). On the other hand, KML is the only patch that is intended to add support to Linux to act as a Ring-0 kernel on behalf of guest systems -- and even then, KML can be viewed more as a hardware driver for the processor extensions.
What we ended up doing is something rather unique: we sell the content we create, levels, voice acting, so on and so forth
Rare, but not unique. The game Abuse had a very similar business model, not to mention that the Doom and Quake games eventually had a similar scheme once their code was GPL'ed. This has been, for a long time, a common description of how commercial games could be open sourced - I applaud you!
There is the saying, "the higher they stand, the greater they fall". It might be legendary, and the initial version might've been both influential and even a good game -- but my point was mostly related to the cash-ins which I feel hit campy/B status.
I remember the days of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, when kids lined up at the arcade to play them -- and every machine that wasn't a fighting game was usually empty. The cash-ins were a dire attempt to continue the arcade experience.
Certainly, at some point, if not from the beginning, it was so bad -- it became a joke
but it was the first of its kind to reach the kind of popularity it has when it was out... You could make the argument that someone along the way its sequels became derivative and boring
I agree that the game was influential in popularizing the genre, but my point was more towards your latter assessment. The many derivatives of the game were so tactless that I consider them to fall into the "B" camp. Surely, at some point, with all the variations it must've seemed campy even to many of its most die-hard fans!
The AI in some games really is funny. Scorched3d for instancs, when you play the "easy" mode, has bots so dumb, they often shoot themselves. However, this isn't really a "bad game" as the higher modes are more challenging.
How about the Street Fighter II series? Certainly, at some point, if not from the beginning, it was so bad -- it became a joke. I have recently started up a game of this, not because it was fun, but it was a great laugh -- its infamous.
Of course, no discussion of B games is complete without talk of Cluster's Revenge...
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But they don't hold the AA meets at the local rubbish dump, sewage treatment plant, or worse... the local water hole. If they did, people would complain. Perhaps it isn't the same thing, but there is a point where the courts demands may be unreasonable. Personally, I feel that running Windows is promoting piracy. Sorry, but most Windows software is closed-source and commercial. If he must run that software, then he will be as most people are, stuck pirating it. His choice of running Linux, as ironic as it was, means that he is probably less guilty of piracy than the average world citizen. The majority of home users, honestly, cannot afford the TCO of a MS Windows environment and pirate their software.
Secondly... If the government feels that monitoring is necessary, that it should only be to prevent further software pirating. They should not be requiring significant changes in his ability to use his computer. If they *must* force someone to change their computing habits then making them run Linux would be much more effective than forcing them to run Microsoft Windows.
First of all, Xen is its own operating system, it does not depend on Linux -- as does KVM, which is a part of Linux. They're both free software, which is great, but Xen does offer one to run a 'dom0' on NetBSD or OpenSolaris. For the latter alone, I could see Sun keeping Xen going -- even if XenSource dropped updating the opensource branch. (Solaris has jails but this is *not* the same thing) IBM has also expressed interest in Xen, although their interests lie in Linux, so they may not be opposed to shifting to KVM.
Secondly... Xen is very well matured compared to KVM, which only in January added support for paravirtualization. Personally, I have tens of machines running Xen for my business and even on such a "small scale" and wouldn't even consider moving to KVM in its terribly immature and feature-poor state.
Finally... Many companies have already deployed Xen and developed their infracture around it (including developing automation routines, etc). I can see a least a handful able to dedicate some development resources. It might not be as great as having a company behind it, but it would be enough perhaps to keep it stable until something else (maybe KVM) catches up.
Where do you live, the United States? Europe is full of actual, real villages, not to mention Africa.
As I see it... The memory bandwidth limitations on Intel's FSB are so restricting that for many applications it matters little how many cores or threads their CPUS can push. The reality is that Intel's chips cannot push memory around fast enough for those processors to be worthwhile. Rather than a dual quad-core system with Intel processors, get a quad dual-core system with AMD processors. You still get 8-cores, but you also get a whole lot more memory bandwidth.
Except even Etch isn't that old. Infact, as a "stable release" it is *very new*. I only upgraded a box from Woody (to etch) only... yesterday.
Here is some perspective for Windows users...
Which of the following sounds illegal with Microsoft Windows?
a) Distributing a Windows application that can run on Microsoft Windows.
b) Distributing a Windows application and including a copy of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 in that distribution.
The claims made that vmserver violates Linux copyright are similar to the latter (b). Linux actually provides a facility, the GPL, which actually says that you can do (b) under certain circumstances. Specifically, (b) is legal as long as the source code is unmodified, or that any and all source code modifications are made available. If vmware does (b) with the modification of source code, and does not make available those changes, then they are in breach of copyright.
We're majorly off-topic here, so I'll make it short (and anonymous)... don't make assumptions just because it isn't on the website, or because the price is low :) This website was built by a systems administrator with no design experience (myself). As for technical questions, contacting sales should get you answers.
Whoops, should've used "preview", I'll just avoid the links this time... vpschoice.com provides a list of a number of inexpensive providers, although it is not all-inclusive. There is also a list on the Xen Wiki, and probably on the OpenVZ wiki too. Webhostingtalk.com can be a good resource, but be careful there... And personally, I'm associated with VPS Village (vpsvillage.com)
There are VPS plans for only $5/mo, although they get tight with resources in that price range.
There are various vps comparison pages out there, such as as well as . Personally, I'm affiliated with VPS Village.
I'm not very active -- the standard desk jockey, but I have a high metabolism and I *used* to be very active, though it has been nearly a decade since I stopped being actively athletic. That said... I'm 5'11, 185lb but sometimes up to 195lb, that puts me around 25-27 BMI with a blistering 10-14% body fat. Surely, I could lose some weight, I've lost the "6-pack" I had a decade ago, but I'm not over-weight by any stretch of the imagination.
As others have said... BMI is pretty useless. I don't consider myself overweight, and according to my body fat.. I'm between "athletic" and "fit" (which are both below "normal"). Yet, with such a plan, I would have to pay a premium??? Silly.
And the air of paperless offices too.
Isn't that what Xprint is for?
The "adapters" that I have are active converters with electronics inside as you describe, but that doesn't solve the "KEYDOWN timeout" that I'm describing -- unless there are circuits out there that don't have this limitation. ( I don't doubt it, but I don't plan to purchase every one on the market until I find one that works well)
Except that the Model:M isn't compatible with all of the PS/2->USB adapters and those adapters, well, quite frankly -- suck.
For instance, with my adapter, when I'm holding shift or ctrl for 5 seconds, it silently "forgets" that I'm holding the key. This is annoying when I'm paging in xterm (shift+page[up/dn]), hunting for a lost session in screen, etc. For games its beyond annoying, as your keyboard casually "forgets" that you're walking forward every 5 seconds.
Though perhaps rare, there are providers that are very keen on security on shared hosts. I do agree though that there are likely many companies for which this is not true. It is a shame, though, that the majority of bad apples spoils it for the few good ones
Good switching policies can keep things in order and make sure that VPS owners don't step on each other's toes. Offering different pricing tiers can help as well. It often seems that the big enterprise places can be the toughest to deal with, but they also tend to pay more. Not that their staff isn't brilliant, they can be, but they're just doing their jobs. On the other hand, the passionate hobbiest will tend to put time into doing things right.
Perhaps, though for myself, this is untrue. I run a hosting provider. Back in the day, we simply needed a few large hosting machines and that was sufficient -- providers could pile accounts onto machines. Even medium-sized companies could get by with less than 10 shared-hosting servers.
However, that has changed with VPS... We can only fit a few customers onto each machine. The more customers we have, the more virtual machines we have, the more resources we require. However, you're right about one thing - we will be buying less hardware. Advances in multi-core processors will mean that we will be needing less space... for now.
Currently my company could upgrade 20 servers from single-core to 8-core, plus load our systems with 32 GB of ram for much less than it would cost us to buy 160 single-core machines. Our savings would be not necessarily to Intel/AMD (we would pay a bit more) but in the amenities: kvm units, kvm cables, switched power distribution units, air-conditioning units, generators, UPS units, power, and staffing (someone has to put that stuff together!)
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that we're not gonna see 16-core machines for some time on x86, for any reasonable price, though it might be possible already today. I wouldn't mind seeing a quad 4-core x86 processor system with 64GB of ram.
> What do you run the virtual machine on - an OS!!
Unless you're running Xen, unless you consider Xen an OS. But this brings us back to the question, "what is an OS?"
Xen is a kernel for managing virtualized guests, it sits at Ring-0 where traditional OS normally resides. Xen requires that a single guest machine is setup to be booted by default, which will receive special priviledges for purposes of managing Xen. This special guest is called the "dom0", but is for all other intents and purposes -- just another virtual machine.
> Personally I like the approach of OpenVZ and VServer better.
They are yet different solutions for different problems. Obviously there is much overlap in all of the virtualization solutions, but these glorified chroot solutions are certainly a different breed.
The advantages for OpenVZ and VServer are exactly their disadvantages. There can be advantages to having dedicated disk and ram resources, rather than shared resources as you have with OpenVZ and VServer. Furthermore, you're tied to having a single kernel for all your guests.
I think that the "shared resources" model of OpenVZ and VServer are a little scary to enterprises as it can make planning and troubleshooting more difficult (avoiding over utilization, determining bottlenecks, etc). For web hosting, I know that many hosts love the shared resources -- more accounts! Obviously, though, this is only another way for the host to oversell. With Xen, there is no such thing as over selling, except perhaps on cpu and disk performance (but not on capacity)! This is why my hosting company only offers Xen accounts, we give customers the satisfaction that do not oversell capacity -- we couldn't if we wanted to!
Still, I think that there are definate uses for VServer and OpenVZ. Obviously, they will remain a staple of web hosting firms for some time, even with Xen creeping into the low-end of the market. However, I do see enterprises using it too, but more for security hardening than for server consolidation. On the other hand, I see Xen more useful for server consolidation than for security hardening. (Where by security hardening, I'm referring to separating apps between virtual machines.) I see both being useful for getting rid of the "one app per server" model that has hit some enterprises, depending on the apps in quesiton. For instance, I think a larger mail server would do better underneath Xen than it would underneath OpenVZ, but a BIND/Named server might do better underneath OpenVZ/VServer. My opinion for this comes from the capacity overhead of running a virtual machine in Xen is already higher -- this overhead increases when used for very-small guests (such as many Bind installations); on the other hand, Xen is very good for large guests, needing much ram and disk, such as one running a very active mail server.
One interesting thing to note is that there is a Debian package containing patches for both Xen and VServer so there is no reason that they cannot be used together.
> It is a little odd to say that Linux "becomes" the Ring-0 kernel under KVM. It was already running in ring 0.
But important to distinguish from Xen, where Linux only runs underneath ring 1.
Each of Xen, KVM, lguest, and UML can be considered virtualization products but they are all vastly different. Below I describe each of these products in relation to their inclusion to the Linux kernel.
Xen - the Linux kernel supports code allowing it to be run as a guest underneath the Xen kernel, all through software. Linux's support for Xen does not make Linux a virtualization platform, only a GUEST for the Xen kernel which sits at Ring-0. (though a "dom0" Linux system can interact intimately with the Xen kernel, it actually sits at Ring-1). I should note that the Xen kernel also supports hardware virtualized domains, though this is unrelated to the patches to Linux.
KVM - the Linux kernel supports virtualization of guests through hardware extensions, this requires supported hardware. Linux becomes the Ring-0 kernel.
lguest - (my understanding is) an unmodified Linux kernel can act as a hyper-supervisor through loading Linux kernels as modules. Linux sits as both Ring-0 (supervisor) and Ring-1 (guests). This is experimental with limited features and only supports Linux guests.
UML - the Linux kernel becomes a userspace program. This allows Linux to run as an executable application/program. With UML, Linux can be compiled for a Linux or Microsoft Windows target. The executing OS sits at Ring-0 and the UML program sits at Ring-1. This has the advantage of requiring no modifications to the host OS and is very portable (you could email an entire Linux system to a friend without requiring anything installed to their system), but the disadvantage of poor performance.
From a high-level, the products UML, Xen, and lguest are actually very similar in function. They act as architectures to which Linux can be compiled in order to make it a guest OS of another Ring-0 kernel. These architectures provide the targets of a kernel module (lguest), a userspace program (UML), or a xen-domU guest (Xen). On the other hand, KML is the only patch that is intended to add support to Linux to act as a Ring-0 kernel on behalf of guest systems -- and even then, KML can be viewed more as a hardware driver for the processor extensions.
Rare, but not unique. The game Abuse had a very similar business model, not to mention that the Doom and Quake games eventually had a similar scheme once their code was GPL'ed. This has been, for a long time, a common description of how commercial games could be open sourced - I applaud you!
There is the saying, "the higher they stand, the greater they fall". It might be legendary, and the initial version might've been both influential and even a good game -- but my point was mostly related to the cash-ins which I feel hit campy/B status.
I remember the days of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, when kids lined up at the arcade to play them -- and every machine that wasn't a fighting game was usually empty. The cash-ins were a dire attempt to continue the arcade experience.
I agree that the game was influential in popularizing the genre, but my point was more towards your latter assessment. The many derivatives of the game were so tactless that I consider them to fall into the "B" camp. Surely, at some point, with all the variations it must've seemed campy even to many of its most die-hard fans!
The AI in some games really is funny. Scorched3d for instancs, when you play the "easy" mode, has bots so dumb, they often shoot themselves. However, this isn't really a "bad game" as the higher modes are more challenging.
How about the Street Fighter II series? Certainly, at some point, if not from the beginning, it was so bad -- it became a joke. I have recently started up a game of this, not because it was fun, but it was a great laugh -- its infamous.
Of course, no discussion of B games is complete without talk of Cluster's Revenge...