Re: [Xen-users] Best distro with out of the box xensupport?

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> How can a project say they have Xen 3.2 in the disto when it can't actually
> function as a Dom0? Isn't the Xen version
> basically tied to Dom0? Can you run Xen 3.04 on the Com0 and 3.2 on DomU
> and is there any benefit?

For some time now the dom0 kernel version has not been tied to the Xen 
version.  This may have started around Xen 3.0.3 or 3.0.4, I can't remember 
exactly.  Anyhow, since then you've been free to mix-and-match Xen and dom0 
kernel versions.  The only caveat is that you don't necessarily get access to 
all of the latest features if you're using an older dom0 kernel (e.g. 
32-on-64 requires awareness in the dom0 kernel as well as in Xen.  If your 
dom0 kernel is too old, this feature will not work).

It's an unfortunate situation that F9 doesn't have a dom0 kernel at all, 
though.  Still the solution they're persuing (dom0 paravirt-ops) is a much 
better solution long term.

> Unfortunately after all of us Redhat customers virtualized our servers they
> want to move away from it in the next EL release. :-(

Is that an official policy?  I was under the impression that dom0 support was 
intended to be returned for F10, once a paravirt-ops dom0 was under way.  I 
can't find any definitive statements on what virtualization technology will 
be in RHEL 6, other than an assurance by Ulrich Drepper that the best 
solution will be chosen (http://udrepper.livejournal.com/15795.html).  Ulrich 
also mentions one of a number of approaches for supporting Xen guests under 
KVM, so if RHEL were to move away from the Xen hypervisor that wouldn't have 
to entail breaking backwards compatibility.

Personally I'd be surprised if RedHat didn't support Xenified RHEL 5 (and RHEL 
4) guests under RHEL 6, whatever virtualiser they eventually choose for that 
OS.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/)

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