[lug] xen versus vmware

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 17:10:15 -0700
siegfried at heintze.com ("siegfried") wrote:

> 
> >I like kvm ( http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki ). 
> 
> >It seems to be pretty fast and stable and they are working on getting
> >it caught up on all the xen/vmware features. Downside is that you
> >must have a newer cpu that can do hardware virt. 
> 
> I remember from Ferdinand's BLUG presentation that VMWare was much
> slower than XEN.  What about KVM vs. XEN?

Any of them can use hardware virt if your cpu supports it... 
I have no numbers, but I would think they would all be similar on
performance since they are all using the same underying tech and it's
in the cpu, not their software. 

> I think the big advantage to VMWare (over XEN and KVM) is that it
> will run on older CPUs that don't have the virtualization feature.
> Can someone confirm that?

Xen can also do this... but it's very slow anyway you stack it up. 

> >Xen and Vmware both have problems that make me never want to use
> >either of them if I can avoid it. ;) 
> 
> Could you elaborate a bit?

Xen isn't in the upsteam kernels. (At least not usably), so this
results in my distro needing to forward port it and maintain it. This
usually means it's running an older kernel and/or there are long delays
for things like security updates, etc. Also, Xen requires you to run
it's special kernel, which has issues for a client machine like not
doing 3d video right or other oddities. 

Vmware is not open source. Their packaging seems very shoddy. Many of
their packages simply ship with copies of all the libraries they need,
meaning that they could be old with security vulnerabilities, etc. Some
of them step on system files.

> Thanks,
> siegfried

kevin

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