Below is an excerpt of the Xen FAQ and the link: #----------------------
Q: How does Xen differ from other virtualization technologies? A: Unlike other virtualization technologies, only Xen is entirely open source. This brings a number of benefits over proprietary solutions, including improved functionality, better performance, and greater extendibility. Xen is without doubt the highest performing hypervisor in the industry – with typically 10x less overhead than competitive proprietary offerings. Xen’s unique performance benefits accrue from its pioneering and industry leading paravirtualization technology, which allows hosted virtual servers to collaborate with the hypervisor to achieve the best performance for enterprise applications. Xen also optimally uses the hardware virtualization capabilities of Intel’s VT and AMD’s Pacifica processors. Unlike other proprietary hypervisors which rely on dated, software-only virtualization, Xen is the industry’s first supported software base for Intel VT. Xen runs unmodified guests such as Windows, on “the bare metal” at native processor speed on Intel VT enabled hardware. Paravirtualization in this case provides I/O performance that Intel VT cannot provide, while still using the best in hardware support for accelerated performance of virtualization. Finally, since Xen has no product fee, it results in a much lower total cost of ownership. http://staging.xen.org/about/faq.html #---------------------------- Regards, LelandJ On 01/29/2010 10:00 AM, Bill Arnold wrote: > > Paul, > >>> I'd favor the VM approach. I think we're all going to wind >> up running VM >>> anyway. >>> >>> No, I'm not using it yet. I'm still reeling from the fact >> that it requires a >>> host OS. Cheap way out, and I think it makes the machine >> vulnerable to >>> attack. But I suspect a better VM will come along at some >> point. I know >>> IBM's VM is exactly what we'd like to have (it doesn't >> require a host). >> >> You could set up a Linux box to boot right into a VM running >> DOS or Windows 3.1. From >> the user's POV, it would be totally native. > > > That's good to know. What I'm really wishing for is a "real" VM where it's > the OS, has no dependencies, and can run any of the major guest OS's. > > Besides using it for testing apps with different releases, my expectation is > that it would provide complete protection for the OS from attacks, because > virtual OS's disappear and (presumably) VM itself can't be touched. > > It's probably being developed somewhere. Intel? > > > Bill > >> >> Paul >> >> [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
