Xen Dom0, are we making progress?

[Tom Samplonius]

----- "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> wrote:
> What about implementing something like DragonFly BSD virtual kernels?
> Matthew Dillon talks about it in is bsdtalk interview:
> http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk098.mp3

  It seems very similar to User Mode Linux, rather than a true VM environment.  http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/   Each DragonFlyBSD vkernel runs as a process.  I don't know why this is even interesting, for anything but kernel developers.  Improving BSD jails to the same level as Solaris Containers (Solaris Containers are Solaris Zones with resource control), would widely useful for many BSD users.

  In VM environment, like Xen, each VM has its own kernel and possibly different OS.  Xen has managed to get a lot of people interested in their VM environment, so there are a lot of OSes that support the Xen "architecture".  And for those that don't there is early support for booting them by using virtual features in newer CPUs (ex. Windows).  Microsoft has joined the Xen bandwagon, even though the core is all open source, as they are threatened in the enterprise space by the VMWare juggernaut, and their Virtual Server/Virtual PC product is so bland, no one cares.

  UML has been available for longer than Xen, but Xen already outperforms it.  I don't see a lot of future in the "virtual kernel" concept.

Tom