Linux Kernel Based Virtual Machine

linux-kvm.org

15 points·chuhnk··11 comments

One benefit of kernel on kernel virtualization is system calls can be optimized straight through, reducing context switching - better than a hypervisor with custom drivers.

I'm not sure that's what is going on here with KVM - but the principle makes sense.

http://www.openvz.org/ does what you want. The PID:s, network interfaces, and the like are all isolated, but you are only running one kernel on the whole system.

Xen might be work taking a look at as well.

Seems preferable for most cases, at least, for it to be user mode, though... maybe you'd want to do this for performance in certain cases?

All modern virtual machines (that is ones that use VT or AMD-V) install kernel extensions. The part of kvm that you interact with is all userland.

So how does the architecture of this differ from something like VMWare?

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#General_KVM_information

What is the difference between KVM and VMware? VMware is a proprietary product. KVM is Free Software released under the GPL.

What is the difference between KVM and QEMU? QEMU uses emulation; KVM uses processor extensions (HVM) for virtualization.

Perfect, thanks.

few years ago that would be a news

With only 6 points, how does this submission show up at the HN front page? or are the submissions ranking even based on points?

i surmise it's the rate at which an article/comment gets points that determines its ranking.

Votes divided by the age in hours to the gravityth power.

Although, the current algorithm is probably slightly different to combat spammers.

http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc#L262

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