From owner-freebsd-xen@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Aug 29 11:26:28 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C72861065670; Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:26:28 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lsc@prgmr.com) Received: from luke.xen.prgmr.com (luke.xen.prgmr.com [38.99.2.47]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B35D18FC15; Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:26:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: by luke.xen.prgmr.com (Postfix, from userid 500) id 335031041EB; Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:27:06 -0400 (EDT) To: Adrian Chadd References: <77abe410908211256g44dd20d8o9b50c20357e63a6b@mail.gmail.com> <4A98DFF6.4060404@prgmr.com> From: Luke S Crawford Date: 29 Aug 2009 07:27:04 -0400 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Lines: 39 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org Subject: Re: finishing up the xen port - would funding help? X-BeenThere: freebsd-xen@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion of the freebsd port to xen - implementation and usage List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:26:28 -0000 Adrian Chadd writes: > I'd suggest "use whatever works". I use Centos 5.x since they use the > latest "stable" xen patched kernel but its quite out of date. If you want to make FreeBSD also run under the 3.0.3/3.1 hypervisor that CentOS/RHEL use, that's great (I think ec2 uses the RHEL/CentOS foo, but that is hersay.) the newer Xen hypervisors all seem to support DomUs that expect 3.0.3 hypervisors, so we should be good. The RHEL5 installations will be out there for a while, and 'yum install xen' is by far the easiest way to get a working Dom0. Prgmr.com uses a xen.org 2.6.18.8-xen (the one that comes with Xen 3.4) kernel and toolset on top of a CentOS 5 userland right now. I moved off of the CentOS kernel because until recently it did not support paravirt_ops DomUs, and the RHEL Xen kernels are slightly less stable than the xen.org kernels. RedHat has made it quite clear that they intend to replace all instances of xen with KVM. So yeah, for me personally, I see NetBSD 5 as the 'way forward' in terms of Dom0 operating systems, now that RedHat has publically stated that KVM should replace Xen in RedHat products (which is weird, because as far as I can see, while both are fine products, they are not even remotely substitutable. KVM would be a silly idea for prgmr.com to use for hosting, and Xen doesn't make sense if you just need to spin up a dev box every now and then.) Currently NetBSD uses the Xen 3.3 hypervisor, and it supports modern hardware. (really, the 2.6.18.8-xen kernel from xen.org, which I currently use in production is mostly okay, especially as the socket F boards havent changed in some time.) I started with FreeBSD Jails, and moved to NetBSD/xen2, and only left because of the ram limit. Now that NetBSD 5 is out, I think it's time for me to switch back.