vkernel & GSoC, some questions

[Igor Shmukler]

Matt,

We use VMWare Server at work. It does not have the same nice image management interface and/or video capture as commercial counterparts. However, it is is free and testing on it helps us out big time. We never concluded whether it maked sense to pay for VMWare licenses, instead of using free shell scripts legally available for free.

I have used UML for development in the past. I even used bochs once to debug a boot loader. All nice tools. Beats real hardware for me.

Xen and KVM are significantly slower than commercial products due to hardware switching. There is a GPLed product that works about as fast as VMWare's BT - VirtualBox by innotek. Sun recently scooped them up.

Don't you use something like VMWare for development and debugging?

In production, we don't use any of these products - too slow and too much RAM would be required.

Sincerely,

Igor Shmukler, http://www.elusiva.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Dillon <dillon at apollo.backplane.com>
To: Igor Shmukler <shmukler at mail.ru>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:58:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Re[4]: vkernel & GSoC, some questions

> 
> 
> :
> :Matt,
> :
> :You sure won't argue that UML isolation is inherently better than one that can be provided by a hypervisor. If the performance is the same, what are you gaining?
> :
> :Hypervisor while slow, allows treating a complete OS with all applications as a black box. Why would I choose UML over a hypervisor?
> :
> :I am not trying to say there cannot be a place for vkernel. [I don't even yet understand what is does or how.] However, as a hosting company, why would I choose UML over a hypervisor?
> :
> :...
> :
> :igor
> 
>     Well, whos hypervisor are you using?
> 
> 					-Matt
> 					Matthew Dillon 
> 					<dillon at backplane.com>