Re: [Xen-devel] Newbie questions

[Ian Pratt <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I've just started looking at Xen and I have some questions. These are
> all fairly basic, as there is preciously little overview documentation
> (most of it seems to be fairly detailed).
> 
> First of all, I'm coming from an UML (User-Mode Linux) and VMware
> background. I'm using UML for a number of things, and I'm generally
> happy with it, except for the performance and lack of suspend/resume
> functionality.
> 
> My questions:
> 
>   -- as I understand, Xen *requires* running a custom kernel, it isn't
>      just a user-level application like UML or VMware?

Yes. It's more like VMware ESX server: rather than having a 'hostOS' 
there's a custom VMM.

>   -- if yes, is it reasonable to expect that a patched (customized for a
>      laptop) kernel that includes swsusp2 and encryption (among other
>      things) will be able to support Xen?

Given that the host is a custom VMM rather than linux, this
question doesn't make sense.

You can suspend/migrate guest OSes, but not the host VMM itself.

As regards encryption, you can compile it into the
guests. There's also some support for network encryption in the
Xen 1.3vnet tree. This will be rather more complete in the new IO
model in 1.4.

>   -- is Xen at all suitable for the following usage scenario: a laptop
>      host, with frequently changing networking, software suspend (via
>      swsusp2), Xenolinux without real-world networking
>      (e.g. host<->Xenolinux communication only)?

Xen is (currently) more targeted at clusters of servers rather
than laptops. However, I do have Xen installed on my Toshiba
R100.

Ian


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