Re: [Xen-users] RHEL6 beta vs. Xen

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 09:04:06AM -0500, Steven Timm wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 10:31:48AM -0500, Steven Timm wrote:
>>>
>>> Has anyone yet figured out what it would take to make Xen
>>> run on top of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta?
>>> We are heavily invested in Xen under RHEL5 (actually
>>> a redhat clone) distribution, but already the xen kernel
>>> they are shipping with update 4 and 5 is shaky and has bugs
>>> which they don't seem to be in a hurry to fix.
>>>
>>> Basically I am wondering if Redhat 6 is just going to
>>> have benign neglect and ignore Xen, or if there is going
>>> to be stuff built into the OS which actively mitigates
>>> against Xen in favor of KVM.
>>>
>>
>> RHEL6 won't have Xen dom0 capability.
>>
> Yes I know that.
> There was a time in the past when RHEL4 didn't have it
> either. In those days people did a lot of work to
> patch the Xen hypervisor into a kernel that looked a lot like
> the RedHat kernel and could run on top of RHEL4.  There were
> even RPMS of a pre-compiled kernel.  That's what I
> am trying to figure out.. are there enough people who
> are both locked into RedHat and committed to Xen that
> it would make sense to try some kind of effort like that again?
>

Yep.. I'm sure people will make rpms of Xen and dom0 kernel for EL6.

>
>> RHEL6 will run as Xen PV and HVM domUs though.
>> You can use RHEL5 Xen dom0 to run RHEL6 Xen PV guests.
>>
>> Or you can use Citrix Xenserver, or XCP to run RHEL6 guests.
>>
> Site OS baselines constrain what I can do in that regard.
> RedHat and derivatives (Scientific Linux) are only distros approved at
> my facility
> Unless someone comes up with a way to do an alternative kernel/hypervisor
> that can run a dom0 in a RedHat OS environment (such as was the case in  
> xen 3.0.2-> xen 3.0.4 days) , there will be a lot
> of us that are forced out of the Xen business, which is of
> course exactly RedHat's plan.  And there are a lot of apps I run
> where KVM just doesn't cut it yet either in terms of I/O throughput
> or in terms of reliability.
>

Both Citrix XenServer and XCP are based on RHEL5 derivatives :)

But yeah.. I'm pretty sure there will be thirdparty RPMs of Xen hypervisor/tools
and dom0 kernel for RHEL6. Just like there is Xen 3.4 and 4.0 for EL5..

-- Pasi

> Steve Timm
>
>
>
>> -- Pasi
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steven C. Timm, Ph.D  (630) 840-8525
> timm@xxxxxxxx  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
> Fermilab Computing Division, Scientific Computing Facilities,
> Grid Facilities Department, FermiGrid Services Group, Assistant Group Leader.
>


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