“For only being a release candidate the Linux 2.6.20 kernel has already generated quite a bit of attention. On top of adding asynchronous SCSI scanning, multi-threaded USB probing, and many driver updates, the Linux 2.6.20 kernel will include a full virtualization (not para-virtualization) solution. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (or KVM for short) is a GPL software project that has been developed and sponsored by Qumranet. In this article we are offering a brief overview of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux as well as offering up in-house performance numbers as we compare KVM to other virtualization solutions such as QEMU Accelerator and Xen.”
What is the benefit of doing virtualization in the kernel? probebly a good reason for this that I’m not aware of. Maybe someone else do?
One reason is it simplifies the process of creating the VM code. The kernel is already equipped for memory management and networking. It leverages what is already available making the code base much smaller.
You can look at http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/HypervisorVsLinuxBased for a good comparison.
I have never been a fan of virtual machines because I have always used them for Desktop tasks and the performance, no matter how good it is, is always disappointing.
However, I have recently begun using virtualization for server tasks, and I have to say I wish I would have done this a long time ago.
KVM is a great feature to have in the Linux kernel and I am excited to be able to benefit from it.
I recently built a core 2 duo box (1st FSB I’v had in years!) and am really looking forward to testing KVM. Although the benchmarks are a bit lacking, I’m not really suprised as its still early days.
New version of KVM is out already. Released yesterday.
Changes from kvm-9:
– more hypercall work
– cleanup irq handling
– shadow page table caching
– migration fixes
– stabilization fixes
“This release is significantly faster than previous releases; upgrading is recommended.”
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/1/7/67