View Poll Results: Which one do you think is better virtualization & why?

Voters
47. You may not vote on this poll
  • KVM

    30 63.83%
  • XEN

    17 36.17%
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 30

Thread: KVM vs XEN

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Posts
    839

    KVM vs XEN

    Which one do you think is better virtualization & why?

  2. #2
    In my opinion, invest a bit up front and gain big later. Go for VMWare, if you can't next best is XEN and then KVM. Personally I like the management features and stability of VMWare over other two solutions.

  3. #3
    I'd say XEN hands down, its more flexible with compatibilty with other solutions and is well documented. Both are great solutions so dont let my biased decision make any difference. XEN is just a great reliably solution.
    SolaDrive - Enterprise Managed Server Solutions
    Specializing in Managed NVMe VPS & Dedicated Servers in US & UK
    Visit us at SolaDrive.com

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    CA
    Posts
    9,350
    Why's OpenVZ not listed here? J/K
    〓〓 RackNerd LLC - Introducing Infrastructure Stability
    〓〓 Dedicated Servers, Private Cloud, DRaaS, Colocation, VPS, DDoS Mitigation, Shared & Reseller Hosting
    〓〓 www.linkedin.com/in/dustincisneros/
    〓〓 My fancy email dustin@racknerd.com

  5. #5
    This topic has been discussed many times.

    Xen still our preferred platform for production environment.
    ControlVM.com :: Elastic Cloud Hosting Alternatives to VPS Reliable Cloud Server
    Enterprise Hosting @
    Malaysia ● Germany ● USA ● Singapore
    We Accept: Paypal
    Alipay GrabPay Credit/Debit Card FPX Bank Transfer Bank TT

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Location
    Taiwan
    Posts
    1,103
    Most answer Xen but the poll shows 7 for Kvm and 5 for XEN. What is this mean ?
    © www.hostinginside.com AS9678 √
    © Taiwan Colocation and Dedicated Server
    © Taiwan, Singapore, US, UK & Germany KVM Based VPS with RAID 10

  7. #7
    I'll go with KVM, i feel its easy and it has features of hdd customisations etc. what all you say!

  8. #8
    Xen is a preferred OS by a lot of providers.

    Maybe you should stick to that for free options.
    More than decade with webhosting!

  9. #9
    Join Date
    May 2013
    Location
    Moscow, Russia
    Posts
    144
    If you go with Xen, use only Xen HVM, because Xen PV sucks. 90% of providers uses Xen PV. So they are sucks

    This is because if you'll install custom kernel on Xen PV, you'll got your machine not running. Only this ****ing virtualization have such problem.

    To the main topic:

    KVM is definitely better than Xen.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    697
    Quote Originally Posted by Lodka View Post
    If you go with Xen, use only Xen HVM, because Xen PV sucks. 90% of providers uses Xen PV. So they are sucks

    This is because if you'll install custom kernel on Xen PV, you'll got your machine not running. Only this ****ing virtualization have such problem.

    To the main topic:

    KVM is definitely better than Xen.

    I've run custom kernels for Xen since 2.6.13 or so. Maybe your hosts were just not able to configure PV-GRUB or pygrub correctly. Who knows. If they couldn't sort it for you, it was them. Of course that'll never occur with a more emulated approach as other hypervisors use.

    But: Xen HVM, KVM, VMWare are all just dead slow compared to Xen PV.
    Not to mention the hopeless amounts of energy wasted emulating idle cpus worldwide...
    Think about the larger clouds - if they didn't use Xen PV there would be some 100K servers running just to accomodate for the 3-5% extra overhead.
    Check out my SSD guides for Samsung, HGST (Hitachi Global Storage) and Intel!

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    697
    Quote Originally Posted by jenok View Post
    Most answer Xen but the poll shows 7 for Kvm and 5 for XEN. What is this mean ?
    The KVM users didn't read the poll carefully?
    Check out my SSD guides for Samsung, HGST (Hitachi Global Storage) and Intel!

  12. #12
    Join Date
    May 2013
    Location
    Moscow, Russia
    Posts
    144
    Quote Originally Posted by wartungsfenster View Post
    I've run custom kernels for Xen since 2.6.13 or so. Maybe your hosts were just not able to configure PV-GRUB or pygrub correctly. Who knows. If they couldn't sort it for you, it was them. Of course that'll never occur with a more emulated approach as other hypervisors use.

    But: Xen HVM, KVM, VMWare are all just dead slow compared to Xen PV.
    Not to mention the hopeless amounts of energy wasted emulating idle cpus worldwide...
    Think about the larger clouds - if they didn't use Xen PV there would be some 100K servers running just to accomodate for the 3-5% extra overhead.
    I've used more than 10 Xen PV hosts in a few years. Always i have problems with kernels. Anytime i install new kernel or (i forgot it, you helped me to remember) change utility which control boot (e.g. grub), i break VPS. Also on all (probably, i am not sure) hosts i see with Xen PV i don't see VNC or KVM (remote console) to control boot process, so i also can not troubleshoot the problem.

    On KVM i can change kernels without any problems, move from 2.62 to 3.11, reinstalling grub, installating enchanced initramfs (dracut). On Xen PV i can not do it.

    Well i'll just is not going with any Xen host for now, because most of them do not said is it Xen PV or Xen HVM.
    KVM is the best. OpenVZ is awesome, but is not good for hoster (maybe fine for total proffesionals), because it needs to run on outdated kernel and (maybe) prefer to work on CentOS.

    I am sure, that hosters must use technologies which good for USERS, not for them. Otherwise they'll just lose most of clients.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    697
    Quote Originally Posted by Lodka View Post
    I've used more than 10 Xen PV hosts in a few years. Always i have problems with kernels. Anytime i install new kernel or (i forgot it, you helped me to remember) change utility which control boot (e.g. grub), i break VPS. Also on all (probably, i am not sure) hosts i see with Xen PV i don't see VNC or KVM (remote console) to control boot process, so i also can not troubleshoot the problem.

    On KVM i can change kernels without any problems, move from 2.62 to 3.11, reinstalling grub, installating enchanced initramfs (dracut). On Xen PV i can not do it.

    Well i'll just is not going with any Xen host for now, because most of them do not said is it Xen PV or Xen HVM.
    KVM is the best. OpenVZ is awesome, but is not good for hoster (maybe fine for total proffesionals), because it needs to run on outdated kernel and (maybe) prefer to work on CentOS.

    I am sure, that hosters must use technologies which good for USERS, not for them. Otherwise they'll just lose most of clients.
    Hi,

    thanks for recalling that from your memory
    Changing bootloaders i.e. from grub to extlinux can kill things, yes.

    The Xen devs are slowly working on this, so that finally the bootloader handling will be as robust as elsewhere.
    /me constantly opens bug reports about this to push things in the right direction. It's generally hard to get engineers interested into what the users really need

    VNC: This basically depends on the hoster, not on the software.
    If they wanna serve their users well, they'll have it, or offer ssh access to the domU console.

    I agree bootloader should transparent for the user. I don't care how they do it.
    I think only VMWare has that down well, especially since it has a "proper" BIOS. So configs that look for updates on PXE and CD and then boot of disk if nothing was there are easy to setup.

    When I see the "free" bios / bootloaders on KVM/HVM I get sick.


    The thing is: If I buy VMs, they're for prod use.
    I want a hoster that just lets me boot my kickstart file or use readymade images and can bring up my vms safely, and each of them should be fast - but not by doing stuff like "writeback" mode in KVM.

    If I wanna tinker, I use VirtualBox at home.

    So, different use cases?
    You pay money and expect to get a properly virtualized system to work with.
    I feel cheated if I pay money and it's not as fast as it could get, just to be more capable for changes I won't do.
    Check out my SSD guides for Samsung, HGST (Hitachi Global Storage) and Intel!

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Posts
    632
    any particular reason why storage vps providers like backupsy.com using KVM instead of Xen? is it due to that KVM supports FreeNAS and NAS4free?

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Posts
    842
    I didn't bother to respond to the poll. The question is incomplete and too open-ended.

    Incomplete:
    There are other virtualization technologies that were not included, and Xen comes in two different forms. OpenVZ and VMware were not included in the poll as well as some other virtualization technologies. Xen comes in both PV and HVM. These points were mentioned by others, above.

    Open-ended: Better how? For whom (the provider? the end user customer?)? For what application or purpose?

    I am a VPS end user/customer with both OpenVZ and KVM VPSs. I like them both, and both have distinct advantages and disadvantages from the end user's point of view.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    May 2012
    Posts
    839
    Quote Originally Posted by vps_newbie View Post
    I didn't bother to respond to the poll. The question is incomplete and too open-ended.

    Incomplete:
    There are other virtualization technologies that were not included, and Xen comes in two different forms. OpenVZ and VMware were not included in the poll as well as some other virtualization technologies. Xen comes in both PV and HVM. These points were mentioned by others, above.

    Open-ended: Better how? For whom (the provider? the end user customer?)? For what application or purpose?

    I am a VPS end user/customer with both OpenVZ and KVM VPSs. I like them both, and both have distinct advantages and disadvantages from the end user's point of view.
    OpenVZ is not virtualization but containerization.And regarding VMware it is good but not free & open source hence is not as widely used as KVM or XEN.So my poll was based on KVM vs XEN only because they occupy 95% or more virtualized environments.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    Internet
    Posts
    2,985
    KVM : out of the box kernel support, good performance.

    Going to test it a bit more before fully making my mind up, but I doubt I'll change my mind.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    127.0.0.1
    Posts
    688
    Quote Originally Posted by wartungsfenster View Post
    But: Xen HVM, KVM, VMWare are all just dead slow compared to Xen PV.
    You're doing something wrong.
    ❄️❄️❄️ HOSTBLIZZARD.COM --- 100% Canadian Hosting Provider ❄️❄️❄️
    • Shared Hosting • Reseller Hosting • Cloud Hosting • VPS Servers • Domain Names
    a division of Sheernox Technology Group

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    3,944
    Quote Originally Posted by Sledger View Post
    OpenVZ is not virtualization but containerization.And regarding VMware it is good but not free & open source hence is not as widely used as KVM or XEN.So my poll was based on KVM vs XEN only because they occupy 95% or more virtualized environments.
    OpenVZ and Virtuozzo/Parallels Containers are still virtualization, just OS virtualization. VMWare, Xen HVM, and KVM are hardware virtualization. Virtualization just means creating a virtual version, whereas Xen HVM and KVM create virtual versions of the hardware and OS, OpenVZ only creates a virtual version of the OS.

    The pro of OpenVZ is that not having to mimic hardware and run separate kernels makes it faster and require less resources than KVM/Xen. The con is that it is limited to linux and has less administrative control / customization.

  20. #20
    All the way KVM, Great performance compared to Xen
    Cloudzy
    Cheap Windows VPS | Linux VPS | Bitcoin VPS | Forex VPS
    Accept Credit Cards, PayPal, PerfectMoney, CryotoCurrency and Bitcoin
    In business for more than 14 years - Since 2008

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Harrisburg, PA
    Posts
    2,074
    My only beef with Xen is that individual node management can sometimes be a pain. As in, how heavy is the CPU usage on this node? Yes, there are command line tools to get that information, but I want a nice pretty bar graph in SolusVM or Virtualizor, just like I see for OpenVZ.

    Does KVM show total CPU usage on a given node?
    Fresh Roasted Hosting :: High-performance Harrisburg web hosting since 2012!
    "The only thing better than the world's best customer service is never needing them in the first place."
    Shared :: VPS :: Reseller :: Dedicated :: Co-Location :: SSL Certificates

  22. #22
    According to Voting looks like, KVM is winner, but in threads people are writing more about XEN.

  23. #23
    Hyper-V 2012 R2 anyday. We have run Citrix XenServer for a long time and Hyper-V has
    the best Linux support over those two.

    Yes, XenServer (Xen PV for Linux guests) is a real pain in the ass for Linux servers.
    Unless you use the correct included Linux templates you are forced to run in HVM-mode
    which means no XS Tools, no XenMontion and pretty much nothing good for administrative
    purposes.

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    208

    *

    My friend... just use what you think is the better for you!

    Try to find some posts from me with the same comparison.

    I have wasted 6 months with these tests and the final reply for this question is:

    Use what you think is the better for you and what you have more knowledge.

    For newbies the Xen is a little complicated to understand because you have Dom and Domu and some times that makes a confusion. Another thing bad to use Xen, if you have some customized hardware like not common Raid Card, this will not work.

    Performance is the SAME, don't think the KVM or Xen will do some magic skills on your hardware. They don't do it!

    If you are going to resell, don't waste your time by trying to find a FULLY AUTOMATED system.
    The only one can do it is the SolusVM.
    Don't waste your time or money by trying to buy some whmcs plugins or extensions to do it.

    There is no one billing module that can do FULLY AUTOMATED at all like the SolusVM. (I hear something about virtualizor, but not tested).

    I have tested all paid modules for Xen, Proxmox, SolusVM and a lot of other modules.
    I also have the HostBill full license too.
    Just don't waste your time. If do you wants to resell, just go for SolusVM and WHMCS.

    If the VMs is for your use, then your best option for sure is the Proxmox.
    But if do you wants to resell Proxmox, for sure you don't have an FULLY automated resell system. Every VM that you will sell, will need your hands on that.

    If someone talk with you and says he have a FULLY AUTOMATED module for Proxmox and WHMCS, its not true. Don't trust him! REAL, I HAVE TESTED EVERYONE FOR 6 MONTHS OR MORE.

    Sorry for the bad english, this is not my first lang.

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    208
    Quote Originally Posted by FarhadM View Post
    In my opinion, invest a bit up front and gain big later. Go for VMWare, if you can't next best is XEN and then KVM. Personally I like the management features and stability of VMWare over other two solutions.
    Are you rich or something like this?

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 03-29-2013, 05:27 PM
  2. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 02-20-2012, 03:30 PM
  3. Replies: 3
    Last Post: 01-27-2012, 01:37 PM
  4. Replies: 1
    Last Post: 01-19-2012, 03:28 AM
  5. Replies: 4
    Last Post: 01-19-2012, 03:27 AM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •