Xen PV-On-HVM in Kernel 2.6.33.X

Xen PV-On-HVM in Kernel 2.6.33.X

[Robert Dunkley]

Does this improvement mean the kernel just need to be compiled with PV
drivers and it will then connect to older 2.6.18 Xen Dom0 kernels with
paravirt Network and IO?

(I'm trying to find out what is needed to get RHEL Xen-Vnif type
paravirt NIC support into a generic HVM type kernel)

Link:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commi
tdiff;h=ffde22ac53b6d6b1d7206f1172176a667eead778


The SAQ Group

Registered Office: 18 Chapel Street, Petersfield, Hampshire GU32 3DZ
SAQ is the trading name of SEMTEC Limited. Registered in England & Wales
Company Number: 06481952

http://www.saqnet.co.uk AS29219

SAQ Group Delivers high quality, honestly priced communication and I.T. services to UK Business.

Broadband : Domains : Email : Hosting : CoLo : Servers : Racks : Transit : Backups : Managed Networks : Remote Support.

ISPA Member

Re: Xen PV-On-HVM in Kernel 2.6.33.X

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 10:12:56AM +0100, Robert Dunkley wrote:
> Does this improvement mean the kernel just need to be compiled with PV
> drivers and it will then connect to older 2.6.18 Xen Dom0 kernels with
> paravirt Network and IO?
> 

Uhm, yes, and no.

Xen PV-on-HVM drivers for the _guest_ kernel provide optimized IO (disk/net)
for Xen HVM guests.

It doesn't matter (in theory) what kernel you're running in dom0, because
Xen hypervisor is the compatibility layer between guests..

> (I'm trying to find out what is needed to get RHEL Xen-Vnif type
> paravirt NIC support into a generic HVM type kernel)
> 

Yeah, RHEL5 has PV-on-HVM drivers available. SLES10 and SLES11 have them aswell.

Xen source tree currently contains PV-on-HVM drivers (unmodified_drivers) 
for 2.6.18 and 2.6.27 kernels.

The plan is to get these Xen PV-on-HVM drivers accepted/merged into upstream Linux kernel.

> Link:
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commi
> tdiff;h=ffde22ac53b6d6b1d7206f1172176a667eead778
> 

That patch is related to KVM hosts, not to Xen hosts.

-- Pasi