New virtualization system beats Xen to Linux kernel

And the virtualization sweepstakes heats up. Every time I write about virtualization I get bombarded with emails from XenSource, Virtuozzo, VMWare, and a skillion mom's-basement-based startups.

This looks interesting, and I like that it's GPL.

"KVM also relies on virtualization technology built into more recent AMD and Intel processors, unlike Xen, which can work without such extensions as long as the guest systems have been modified to work with Xen." Software virtualization is so been-there done-that. Hardware virtualization support for x86 is the big story- this is pretty radical, since that's something that's only been present in hideously expensive mainframe hardware until now.

"Software virtualization is so been-there done-that. Hardware virtualization support for x86 is the big story- this is pretty radical, since that's something that's only been present in hideously expensive mainframe hardware until now."

Software virtualization like Xen does is not been-there, done-that - the hypervisor concept is a new breed and makes virtualization practical in many cases where it wouldn't have been usable before. It's also _massively_ faster than straight hardware virtualization via VT-x/Pacifica.

What will wind up happening is a mix of the two - hardware virtualization taking care of security, edge cases, and un-cooperative OSes (Windows), and software hypervisor virtualization speeding critical things up by avoiding hardware virtualization in OSes that support it.

Unfortunately, right now, very few people can experiment with hardware virtualization due to having to get the planets to align to be able to use it - you need a CPU, BIOS, motherboard, and chipset supporting it or you can't use it. Vendors (e.g., Dell) seem to be trying to avoid letting desktop systems have what's required for hardware virtualization. No one's sure why. It might be for product differentiation ("buy our expensive servers if you want this") or a Microsoft thing seeing as they've been very specific about how they want Vista dealing with hardware virtualization.

This looks like uml, except that uml only runs linux, while this one can run windoze -

Since I don't have any use for running windoze, kvm doesn't seem to have any real advantages over uml for me. I suppose there are those that would find it of interest though...