Speaker Micheal Wahran
Time 2009-05-04 19:00
Conference LUV

Hypervisors

KVM and Xen

Evolution

  1. Binary translation of code. Very slow.
  2. Para-Virtualisation. Guests are VM aware. Issues with Windows, Windows not VM aware and doesn’t like to run in ring 0.
  3. Hardware based virtualisation. e.g. KVM/VT - KVM just a loaded module.

KVM architecture

  • Accepted upstream in kernel (unlike Xen).
  • In kernel since 2006.

We still support Xen.

RHEL5

RHEL6

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation

oVirt

KVM based system.

Page sharing COW patented?

Routing of packets to given mac address handled at silicon level, not domain 0 process.

Features:

  • VM High availability.
  • Can have hot spare running but paused.
  • live migration
  • Can specify that DNS servers must run on seperate computers.
  • priorities
  • Can run servers on off peak times only.
  • Deploy new VMs based on templates.
  • More secure then Windows with VM-Secure - SE-Linux.
  • Demand computering - more CPU power if demand increases. With thresholds.
  • Host based firewall (not based on IP or MAC address).
  • Overnight KVM capabilities, load kvm module. Day time non-KVM bare metal running. Unload kvm module.