[Linux] Linux KVM

[Nick Simicich]

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 11:36, Kendrick Vargas wrote:
> Kwan Lowe wrote:
> > I stayed up last night building out the 2.6.20 kernel with KVM (Kernel
> > Virtualization Module). Don't have it working yet with an installed virtual OS, but
> > it looks like it'll give VMWare and Xen a run for their money.  My kernel builds but
> > I need to figure out some weird disk issues. Anyone running KVM yet?
> 
> Hmmm... I was just looking at that from slashdot. The benchmarks the dude
> did on the new module didn't look too good. Of the virtualized environments,
>  Xen stilled fared best (between actual hardware, QEMU, Xen, and KVM). And
> by fared best, I mean consistently came out leaps ahead (except when doing a
> gzip) than any of the other environments.

Astoundingly, I've seen cases where virtualization environments came out
better than systems running on naked hardware.  This usually had to do
with the efficiency of multitasking - there are some systems where the
dispatcher is so horrible (or perhaps needs consider so many factors for
generality) that it is cheaper and faster to run two copies of the OS
under a virtualizer - all hardware waits at the same speed but not all
hardware sets up to wait at the same speed.

> The tests weren't scientific (or particularly thorough), and kvm is still
> new, so I'll reserve judgement till it's "stable". I'm definitely optimistic
> though :-)

And benchmarking different mixes may give different results.  I think
that the scientific way of saying that is, "milage may vary depending on
position of driver".

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