[CentOS-virt] XEN and RH 6

Tue Nov 10 13:25:28 UTC 2009
Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik at iki.fi>

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 05:01:46AM -0800, Grant McWilliams wrote:
>    On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 4:36 AM, carlopmart <[1]carlopmart at gmail.com>
>    wrote:
> 
>      Pasi KÀrkkÀinen wrote:
>      > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 01:20:11PM +0100, carlopmart wrote:
>      >> Pasi KÀrkkÀinen wrote:
>      >>> On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 11:27:57AM +0100, carlopmart wrote:
>      >>>> Pasi KÀrkkÀinen wrote:
>      >>>>
>      >>>>>> Still it isn't official, but Citrix XenServer will disappears
>      soon ... It will be
>      >>>>>> integrated under Microsoft Hyper-V ....
>      >>>>>>
>      >>>>> Uhm.. I don't believe this. Where did you read that?
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> Citrix XenServer was opensourced last week, or the
>      hypervisor+tools
>      >>>>> part, the xencenter management interface remains closed source
>      (but it
>      >>>>> can also manage hyper-v).
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>>> IMHO, it isn't a good option to maintain domO virt servers based
>      on CentOS or RHEL
>      >>>>>> now ... It is the time to migrate to another solutions ...
>      >>>>>>
>      >>>>> RHEL5, with Xen, will be fully supported by Redhat until 2014.
>      They have
>      >>>>> clearly stated that many times.
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> -- Pasi
>      >>>> Ok, I think I haven't explained well, sorry. Citrix Xenserver's
>      hypervisor and tools
>      >>>> was donated by Citrix last week, correct. But Citrix didn't release
>      more versions of
>      >>>> the product because it does not intend to develop it and apply new
>      features. Citrix
>      >>>> virtualization bussiness will be focused only on Management and
>      Desktop
>      >>>> virtualization using Hper-V as a first platform and second VMware.
>      >>>>
>      >>> Where did you read this? You write it like it's a fact - I haven't
>      seen
>      >>> that anywhere.. ??
>      >> This will be announced over next weeks ...
>      >>
>      >
>      > Again, are you speculating, or is this a fact? I think Citrix
>      XenServer 5.7
>      > will be released soon :)
> 
>      Ok, stay and wait. But I repeat: Citrix will focused his efforts only on
>      Management
>      and Desktop virtualization, not on servers. First past it is do it:
>      donate xenserver
>      to opesource community.
> 
>    If this is true it will not only be the death of Xen but of Citrix as
>    well.  I don't see a company surviving that only makes a gui to manage
>    someone else's VM solution. I think Microsoft is capable of making their
>    own GUI.
>

I think that was just speculation. It doesn't make much sense to me. 
Time will show :)

> 
>    I do think that we should probably just give up on getting xen in the
>    kernel for Dom0. It's clear that the kernel guys will never let this
>    happen. 

Xen _hypervisor_ doesn't need to be in the kernel - that's the whole
point. Xen hypervisor is external piece, maintained (and updated)
separately from the dom0 kernel.

pv_ops Xen dom0 kernel patches are currently in the process of being 
cleaned up to be acceptable for upstream inclusion. That has taken
longer than originally thought, ie. more changes had to be done after
the previous attempt of upstreaming.

Jeremy will have a talk about pv_ops dom0 status and plans this month at
Xen Summit (in China, at Intel's facility).

http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2009/11/04/xen-summit-asia-2009-event-information-released/

> Xen may very well become a distribution providing a Dom0. The DomU
>    stuff is already in the kernel so a very light distribution that only
>    provides networking tools, security tools and the Dom0 code would be fine
>    for those who want to continue using Xen. I've not been convinced that KVM
>    is quite ready to do what Xen does. I use it but not for production.
> 

The newly opensourced XenServer could be developed to be something like
this..

There's also a recent project to develop web management interface for
XenServer:

http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2009/11/09/project-xvp/

-- Pasi