Re: [Xen-API] XCP 1.5 eta

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 11:58:34PM -0600, Scott Zupek wrote:
>    I am curious for a little information and am wondering if anyone can
>    provide it.
> 
>    I originally used the XCP ISO but had to ditch it because XCP wasn't
>    easily compatible with the software raid scenario that we used and since
>    have jumped over to KVM.
> 
>    Personally I have never seen any hypervisor even come close to the
>    performance I have gotten from the Paravirtualization KVM solution on
>    Debian.  
>

KVM does NOT do Paravirtualization. KVM uses "full virtualization", meaning 
"full emulation".
KVM has PV *drivers* available though.

Xen does both Paravirtualization and Full virtualization. 
Xen PV VMs automatically use PV drivers, and if using Xen Full Virtualization 
(HVM) instead,
then you can install additional Xen PV drivers for the HVM VMs, giving you Xenm 
PVHVM VMs.



> It blows everything else I have used to date (all freeware, ESXi
>    and XCP 1.1) for small business.  But I would like to know what am I
>    missing by going with para virtualizatoin like KVM over a hardware thingy
>    mbob (cant remember the actually name sorry, its the one where the VM gets
>    direct access to the hardware). 

For CPU bound benchmarks there shouldn't be big differences between hypervisors,
since well, it's mostly the CPU that matters. If you're seeing big differences
in CPU bound benchmarks between Xen, KVM, VMware, or anything else, 
you probably have something wrong in your benchmark.

For IO (disk/net) bound benchmarks Xen beats KVM in most benchmarks. 
(See XenSummit 2011 North America slides for more information/details).

With Xen there are different virtualization types, 
so remember to benchmark all of them:

        - Xen Paravirtualization (PV domUs).
        - Xen Full Virtualization (HVM).
        - Xen Full Virtualization with PV drivers (PVHVM).


> I have windows server 2008 w/ 2 VCPU's and
>    1024mb of VRAM booting up in 10 seconds and shutting completely down in 10
>    seconds.  This is light years better than even with dedicated software.
>    The hyperthreading seems to be exactly as it should, so for a small
>    business (or even a larger business such as UBISOFT) what benefits does
>    one have using XCP over something like KVM.
> 

10 seconds and faster than on baremetal. That should ring alarm bells... 
sounds like you're heavily caching disk IO on the host, risking VM disk 
corruption 
in the case of hardware/linux/kvm/windows crash or power failure.. ? 

When Xen and KVM are configured in a matching way Xen should be as fast, 
and often faster than KVM.


>    I am simply asking because I don't understand why everyone on the planet
>    hasn't jumped onto KVM's.
> 

KVM is good for some things, and Xen is good for some other things.
For example security/isolation model of Xen is more advanced compared to KVM.


>    Thank you and no fanboyism junk here, simply want to know for the sake of
>    having knowledge.
> 
>    Scott


-- Pasi



> 
>    On 1/5/12 7:58 PM, George Shuklin wrote:
> 
>      I have no idea about Citrix planes, but it looks like kronos is moving
>      forward.
> 
>      On 14.12.2011 02:26, Christian Lachance wrote:
> 
>        Hi,
> 
> 
> 
>        I am working in the Ubisoft Cloud team and we are waiting for XCP 1.5
>        to be released.  Looking at the roadmap, RC1 should have been released
>        in November and Final release in December.  Is there any news on XCP
>        1.5 release date or RC1 download?  If found the dates here:
>        [1]http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XCP_Roadmap
> 
> 
> 
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