Red Hat’s final gameplan: KVM will reduce Xen to scrap heap
By Tarry Singh at 16 October, 2009, 2:15 am
As an example of a benefit of using KVM, Thadani mentioned memory page sharing. “Memory is usually the binding constraint when it comes to virtualization. We already have memory page sharing in KVM, while this is much harder in Xen, so we can run more virtual machines on any given server with KVM,” he says.
Thadani suggests another example: using KVM, every running virtual machine is a separate Linux process on the host machine. This means “bare metal” Linux apps and virtual machines can easily run side by side on the same physical host. This could be very useful in a data center that, during business hours, must run business applications that can’t be virtualized, he explained. After hours, these same physical machines could be put to work playing host to a larger number of virtual machines.
Red Hat plans to provide KVM in two ways: By offering KVM with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4, which was released in early September, or as a separate thin Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) hypervisor. This is effectively a KVM hypervisor that runs on bare metal, like VMware ESX Server or Xen, rather than a full RHEL installation that offers virtualization.
Which is the most appropriate offering? The full RHEL 5.4 with KVM is targeted at enterprises familiar with Linux, and those that perhaps already have their own hardened RHEL build, with customized boot scripts, and so on.
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