FreeBSD PVHVM call for testing
Hello, Recently Justin T Gibbs, Will Andrews and myself have been working on improving the Xen support in FreeBSD. The main goal of this was to bring full PVHVM support to FreeBSD, right now FreeBSD is only using PV interfaces for disk and network interfaces when running as a HVM guest. The main benefits of this changes are that Xen virtual interrupts (event channels) are now delivered to the guest using a vector callback injection, that is a per-cpu mechanism that allows each vCPU to have different interrupts assigned, so for example network and disk interrupts are delivered to different vCPUs in order to improve performance. With this changes FreeBSD also uses PV timers when running as an HVM guest, which should provide better time keeping and reduce the virtualization overhead, since emulated timers are no longer used. PV IPIs can also be used inside a HVM guest, but this will be implemented later. Right now the code is in a state where it can be tested by users, so we would like to encourage FreeBSD and Xen users to test it and provide feedback. The code is available in the following git repository, under the branch pvhvm_v5: http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/royger/freebsd.git;a=summary Also, I've created a wiki page that explains how to set up a FreeBSD PVHVM for testing: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Testing_FreeBSD_PVHVM ___ freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-virtualization To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-virtualization-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD PVHVM call for testing
On 05/13/13 11:52, Michael Sierchio wrote: I think should be encouraged. We're eagerly awaiting the ability to run FreeBSD in AWS in something other than t1.micro or cluster compute instances. Should we keep holding out hope, or will AWS make HVM available for all instance types before this happens? Err... my AMIs run on all EC2 instance types. On some you have to pay the Windows rate, that's all. -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid ___ freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-virtualization To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-virtualization-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD PVHVM call for testing
The Windoze tax is unacceptable for a number of reasons - the primary reason is that I'm not running Windows. I don't think the licensing scheme is unfair for those actually running Windows, mind you. At the AWS Summit, an assertion was made that HVM support might be coming soon for all instance types for *NIX OSes. I hope that's true. - M On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Colin Percival cperc...@freebsd.orgwrote: On 05/13/13 11:52, Michael Sierchio wrote: I think should be encouraged. We're eagerly awaiting the ability to run FreeBSD in AWS in something other than t1.micro or cluster compute instances. Should we keep holding out hope, or will AWS make HVM available for all instance types before this happens? Err... my AMIs run on all EC2 instance types. On some you have to pay the Windows rate, that's all. -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid ___ freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-virtualization To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-virtualization-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD PVHVM call for testing
On 05/13/13 12:08, Michael Sierchio wrote: The Windoze tax is unacceptable for a number of reasons - the primary reason is that I'm not running Windows. I don't think the licensing scheme is unfair for those actually running Windows, mind you. Right, it's definitely annoying having to pay more -- I just wanted to point out that the ability does exist, if you're willing to pay the price. At the AWS Summit, an assertion was made that HVM support might be coming soon for all instance types for *NIX OSes. I hope that's true. Was it indeed? I must not have been present for that... it certainly would be good news. Certainly all the new instance types they've released in the past few years have had UNIX HVM support. -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid ___ freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-virtualization To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-virtualization-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
