WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

Re: [Xen-devel] HVM vs. PV in Reliability

On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 10:22 +0000, Yutao Liu wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Ian Campbell
> <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>         On Sun, 2011-02-20 at 12:55 +0000, Yutao Liu wrote:
>         > Hello,I'm wondering are there any datum that can compare the
>         > reliability/availability/dependability of HVM and PV,
>         especially the
>         > driver of them?
>         > For example, how many bugs found in the drivers of HVM and
>         PV?
>         
>         
>         > In the case of PVHVM drivers these are the same drivers so
>         the numbers
>         > would be the same.
>     But PV and HVM have different data flow, e.g. in PV, there is the
> communication between frontend and backend, but in HVM there
> may be not, are there any bugs appear in these procedure?

I was talking specifically about PVHVM, where the dataflow is the same.

In any case I'm not aware of anyone having done an audit of the bug
counts in this specific area etc.

If you are interested in the numbers then I'm afraid the best suggestion
I have is that you look back over the CVE history, or the version
control etc and count them yourself.

>         > All domains are equally isolated from the other domains in
>         the system,
>         > be they domain 0, PV domU or other HVM domains. One domain
>         cannot crash
>         > another unless it has particular privilege.
>     What about when the frontend in domU communicate with backend in
> dom0? In my opinion,  the isolation in PV is not as well as in HVM(do
> you agree with me?), so are there any cases that the bug in frontend
> affect the backend?

That would be a serious bug in the backend, we are not currently aware
of any such bugs.

>         > Is there some research or paper talk about this?
>         The last question:) is there any research ever talked about
>         it? that is, the compare between HVM(both qemu-emulates and
>          with SRIOV) and PV in the area of dependability?
>    Thanks so much:)

Not as far as I know, but I haven't really been paying much attention to
this area of research.

Ian.



_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel