Re: Xen & VMI?

Ingo Molnar
2007-03-06T09:11:31Z

* Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> wrote:

> > > reduces the QA effort. You still have 5 Hypervisors you have to
> > > test against.
> >
> > yes, just like we have thousands of separate PC boards to support.
> > But as long as the basic ABI is the same, the QA effort on the Linux
> > kernel side is alot more focused. (Distros still have
> > 18446744073709551616 total combinations to QA, and have to make an
> > educated guess to reduce that to a more manageable number.)
>
> But hardware PC boards don't do anything as remotely complicate as
> changing the semantics required for correctness in you MMU
> implementation. [...]

ugh, PC boards are actually far worse and far more diverse than any
variances between hypervisors, but i digress.

anyway, my point stands: the Linux kernel is significantly more
maintainable and easier to QA if it has only a single 'external'
hypervisor ABI to worry about - and that might as well be VMI. This is a
really obvious point, i expected the discussion to center more around
the specifics of such a move ;-)

Ingo