Re: Xen & VMI?

Zachary Amsden
2007-03-06T08:48:45Z

Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> I fail to see how xen-via-vmirom instead of xen-via-paravirt_ops reduces
> the QA effort. You still have 5 Hypervisors you have to test against.
>

You've also got a frozen, multi-vendor binary interface, which was the
straw which broke our original intentions for VMI. Try as you can, you
cannot get around this, and there is just no way that list of players
are going to remain friendly and happy with each other (embrace, extend,
conquer, anyone?). There are already differences with VMI / lhype and
Xen (shadow vs. direct page tables), and also with KVM vs VMI / Xen /
lhype (required HVM vs optional HVM). Like it or not, incompatible
changes will happen, and with no official standard body to mediate so
that it can't be dominated by one party, I don't see how it can work.
Which is why I now prefer the flexible in kernel API of paravirt-ops.

Zach