Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Cloud service providers weigh Xen-to-KVM move

[cheapvpscloud]

KVM hosting offer still rare in this forum

searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid94_gci1516376,00.html?track=sy420

"Cloud service providers are showing increased interest in the KVM hypervisor, given Xen's ongoing struggles to keep up with the latest versions of Linux.

Most service providers continue to run Xen which, as a bare-metal hypervisor lends itself to virtual private server deployments, and has a longer track record in the market, but the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor is on their radar -- and KVM support from heavyweights IBM and Red Hat doesn't hurt...."

[cloudvps]

Can you point on the main advantages of KVM over XEN ?

[cheapvpscloud]

Originally Posted by cloudvps

Can you point on the main advantages of KVM over XEN ?

Rather than promoting Xen, i wanna hear some comments from WHT members here. I know there are many Xen Lovers here

[cheapvpscloud]

Originally Posted by cloudvps

Can you point on the main advantages of KVM over XEN ?

These are what i know:
- KVM is integrated in mainline (official) linux kernel
- supported by redhat (this was one of strong points of Xen)

[vselvara]

Originally Posted by cheapvpscloud

These are what i know:
- KVM is integrated in mainline (official) linux kernel
- supported by redhat (this was one of strong points of Xen)

We have moved to KVM for those reasons but we have not migrated customers on Xen to KVM. It is easier to leave them on Xen and have new signups on KVM. With Xen we ran the virtual servers in paravirtualization but with KVM we are running them using hardware virtual machine (HVM). In our experience we found KVM HVM to outperform Xen HVM. HVM mode allows customers to run "almost" any OS/kernel unmodified. The virtio drivers do help with IO but are not required.

[cloudvps]

We still did not implement KVM since we didn't find the appropriate remote management software for it. I know SolusVM still did not implement it for the single server model. So we use SolusVM for the Linux flavors and Citrix XENServer for Windows, of course we want to unify this as soon as possible.

[jimbailey]

We have been selling KVM VPSs for two years now and are very happy with it - to the extent that we no longer offer OpenVZ plans at all.

We went with KVM because it was a single module that could be loaded on any modern Linux kernel. We had already tried Xen and it didn't support our hardware and it didn't look like it was keeping pace with kernel developments. Being able to use the latest kernel that did support our hardware was an important factor with KVM, but we also felt that it was a better approach generally. Having a full, widely deployed, widely tested OS such as Linux is a good starting point for a virtual machine host, and I think KVM's performance reflects that.

The lack of management tools wasn't a problem, we have a high availability clustered setup that off the shelf products aren't going to support anyway. We had already written our own tools for OpenVZ, adding KVM support was fairly straight forward.

Right now we still have OpenVZ customers and it has given us many years of reliable service. However, we prefer to give our customers the added power of running their own OS, hence KVM. Xen is a very well established technology, but we didn't think it was the best option two years ago and it now looks like it is trailing even further behind.

I'm sure others will be just as happy with their decision to go/stick with Xen. Both options are solid, it just comes down to the small details and preference.

Jim

[cheapvpscloud]

@vselvara,@cloudvps,@jimbailey
Thanks Guys.

@jimbailey:
don't you have promo for your kvm vps?

[jlkinsel]

To the guys running KVM - what management sw are you using? Something written in-house, or?? I'm not trying to rehash the hosting panel discussions which have happened on here many times, just looking to see if I've missed anything.

I'm getting ready to enter the VPS biz...current plan is to start with solusvm + xen, and then support KVM once they offer that service, but if I could just be pure kvm from the get-go I'd be happy...