[CVALE] Wine/Xen/Qemu/VMware, etc.

[Robert Johnston]

Pete Zaitcev wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:24:04 -0700, "Wayne Vieira" <wavieira at pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I know that VMware is the most expensive, but QEMU and KQEMU seems to do
>>most of what I need.  XEN seems to be pretty popular, but looks difficult to
>>set up.  Is any/all of this true?  What have other users out there tried?
>>    
>>
>
>Xen supports true virtualization on special hardware only. I do not
>remember how it's called, but it's some set of features on new
>AMD and Intel CPUs which enables full virtualization.
>
Right - I think Intel's calling it VT-x.  For AMD I think it's called 
Pacifica.  Intel chips with VT-x are out now, but I don't know if AMD 
processors with Pacifica are readily available, yet.  I think the Rev F 
Opterons will have Pacifica.

>Xen only does
>paravirtualization on legacy hardware, so you cannot run stock XP.
>  
>
Yeah - you have to effectively port the kernel of whatever OS you want 
to use as either the host (dom0) or guest (domU) to the Xen hypervisor.  
The Linux kernel has been ported, of course, and Solaris and BSD ports 
are in progress.  The nice thing though is that Xen VM's run at near 
native speed.  Xen also has nifty features like domain cloning and live 
domain migration between physical machines.  Unlike VMware, it's also 
open source.  It definitely cool stuff.

rob