Re: Xen

[Atticus <grobe0ba%gmail.com@localhost>]

> Precisely what I remember, from the two-three years ago.  Ultimately,
> why fight it, when there are easier options?  I might have been
> impatient, but still...  VirtualBox on FreeBSD worked out of the box.
> Performance was such, though, that I abandoned its use soon, too.  With
> the current modest costs of hardware...
>
> -- Alex -- alex-goncharov%comcast.net@localhost --
>
>
VirtualBox is useless for large-scale virtualization. A Xen domu runs at
almost host speed, with very little overhead. I've run multiple domu's (not
in production, just for fun) on a single-core 2.8GHz P4 with 1Gb of RAM with
for weeks at a time, with no issues. Yes, it lagged if I had them all doing
resource intensive things, but in a production environment, one would be set
up with multiple processors, gigabytes of memory, etc. VirtualBox has it's
place, don't get me wrong. It's great for those "let's test out this new
distro/OS/winblow$" times, but even on a well built box, you're very limited
by the full virtualization. Full virtualization will always be slower than
paravirtualization. The better the hardware gets, the better the
virtualization software will get, but the more complex full virtualization
becomes. Xen will always have it's pseudo-devices and the like, and
VirtualBox will always be emulating an entire processor+peripherals. There's
no way around the speed damper.


-- 
FT3(SU) Byron Grobe, USN