Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Why is there lack of love for VMware & XEN HVM?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Why is there lack of love for VMware & XEN HVM?

Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
edited January 2014 in General

These days I see 90% hosts who have been in industry offering either OpenVZ and/or KVM where as the new providers don't even consider VMware (I am talking about the free version which is called vSphere hypervisor) or XEN HVM. For quite sometime I have used VMware to make VMs on one of my dedicated servers for personal use & found it to be very reliable & stable also XEN HVM is most mature bare metal hypervisor & I always liked whenever I ordered a XEN HVM vps but I am surprised at lack of love for them.

It might be just me only but I always found Windows running much stable & smooth on VMware & XEN HVM as compared to KVM.

What do you think is it just because KVM is backed up by Red Hat & out of box kernel support that every host is preferring it or is there something really wrong with VMware & XEN HVM? Remember most of the big & well known cloud providers are either using XEN or VMware.

Note: I like KVM, XEN & VMware(all 3 of them)----all of them have their pros & cons though but still I am just curious about lack of love for VMware & XEN HVM.

«13

Comments

  • Maybe the fact that both VMWare is not a free opensource platform is what makes people stay away from it?

  • @Jack said:
    Well VMware isn't solusvm compatible

    Yes but you can still provide console access to clients using vSphere client.I agree it doesn't have as much features as Solusvm but still its good enough

  • @Jack said:
    XEN HVM is similar to KVM so why offer that why you can do KVM ?

    XEN is more mature & has gone through the test of time successfully.

  • Mark_RMark_R Member
    edited January 2014

    @Sledger said:
    Yes but you can still provide console access to clients using vSphere client.I agree it doesn't have as much features as Solusvm but still its good enough

    vSphere client is way cooler than SolusVM

    works very good and you can do everything solus can do.

    I think alot providers just rather stick with what they know / feel safe with

    instead of making the switch to a new virtualization.. they will have to invest time to get to know it.

  • Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
    edited January 2014

    @rds100 said:
    Maybe the fact that both VMWare is not a free opensource platform is what makes people stay away from it?

    As I said in my original post there is a free version previously it had 32 GB RAM limit but ow they have removed that as well.

    http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/

  • I just tried skimming the licensing related pages on the vmware website and got a headache. I am not convinced this is really free.

  • VMWare has licensing restrictions that are a pain to deal with plus it is expensive.

  • @rds100 said:
    I just tried skimming the licensing related pages on the vmware website and got a headache. I am not convinced this is really free.

    It really is free!

  • qpsqps Member, Host Rep

    We offer Xen HVM. Our customers love it.

  • Sledger said: It really is free!

    If you offer commercial services using VMWare it is against their terms (even though there is almost nothing they can do about it).

  • drserverdrserver Member, Host Rep

    We use Xen HVM as our default platform. As i can see really good client isolation. Maybe best.

  • Shoaib_AShoaib_A Member
    edited January 2014

    @zhuanyi said:
    If you offer commercial services using VMWare it is against their terms (even though there is almost nothing they can do about it).

    I just called them via Skype at this number 1-877-486-9273 to confirm it & they said "You can use the free version for providing hosting services & can also use it in commercial environments but there are some limitations in vSphere client with the free version"

    Could be wrong only if their sales team is as knowledgeable as that of OVH.

  • Good products, but too expensive to use for low-end clients.

  • There is no automation for VMWare that will install the OS and stuff. It was prohibited to use the free version to provide commercial services. It should be still the case.

    There is no real advantage of Xen HVM over KVM.

  • @serverian said:
    There is no automation for VMWare that will install the OS and stuff. It was prohibited to use the free version to provide commercial services. It should be still the case.

    There is no real advantage of Xen HVM over KVM.

    Just out of curiosity, what panel are you using for Hyper V so that client can start/restart/stop their vps(if you don't mind sharing it openly)?

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider
    edited January 2014

    @serverian said:
    There is no real advantage of Xen HVM over KVM.

    100% allocation without performance hit

    PV on HVM drivers for higher performance than virtio

    Stable long term base for better OS support and stability on a wider rage of hardware

    Better IO Scheduler.

    :)

    And when PVH comes along in 4.4 (currently at 4.3) that list will get 10x longer :)

    KVM ran windows better first, that is true, now the GPLPV drivers are on public release that is no longer the case.

    The qemu emulation process per guest hits the host node harder on KVM as well as the fact that Xen by default will pass a greater amount of CPU instruction sets to the guest rather than the limited qemu-cpu that KVM seems to use by default.

    /2c

    edit: to be clear KVM is the best thing that ever happened to Xen, without any competition development was to slow, since the competition came along Xen pulled up their socks, its back in support with RHEL and have made HUGE leaps in the last 18 months.

  • @AnthonySmith said:
    100% allocation without performance hit

    There should be a overhead on this.

    PV on HVM drivers for higher performance than virtio

    Any benchmarks?

    Stable long term base for better OS support and stability on a wider rage of hardware

    Any proof?

    The qemu emulation process per guest hits the host node harder on KVM as well as the fact that Xen by default will pass a greater amount of CPU instruction sets to the guest rather than the limited qemu-cpu that KVM seems to use by default.

    KVM can pass all instructions with "host" CPU mode.

  • @Sledger said:
    Just out of curiosity, what panel are you using for Hyper V so that client can start/restart/stop their vps(if you don't mind sharing it openly)?

    It's 100% custom built.

  • drserverdrserver Member, Host Rep

    @serverian @AnthonySmith xen pv runs faster than KVMon same node on E3 1230. I have tested it months ago, i don't have any benchmarks to prove it so take this as my personal opinion if you wont trust me. On L5520 performance was almost same.

  • @drserver said:
    serverian AnthonySmith xen pv runs faster than KVMon same node on E3 1230. I have tested it months ago, i don't have any benchmarks to prove it so take this as my personal opinion if you wont trust me. On L5520 performance was almost same.

    How about PV drivers on HVM?

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    There is not, Dom0 resources are preallocated.

    Not that I can show but I have benchmarked and to manage both KVM and Xen on a daily basis.

    You need proof thet Xen supports a wider hardware range and has been around longer?..... hehe

    KVM Can yes, I was talking about default.

  • drserverdrserver Member, Host Rep

    @serverian That is impossible. If you are using PV mode then you don't have HVM

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    PV Drivers on HVM give the same performance as PV on PV as it no longer needs to be emulated.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    @drserver said:
    serverian That is impossible. If you are using PV mode then you don't have HVM

    I think he was referring to PV on HVM (PVHVM) all major distro's have have PV drivers since circa 2005.

    Ant.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • @AnthonySmith said:
    There is not, Dom0 resources are preallocated.

    Preallocated doesn't mean anything. It should still have some overhead to be able to virtualize the CPU. Therefore, performance hit.

    You need proof thet Xen supports a wider hardware range and has been around longer?..... hehe

    I know it's been around longer but what makes you say that it supports a wider hw range?

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    Anyway @Sledger the reason is bad perception combined with assumptions with a hint of hipster :)

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    What I mean is you can sell 100% of the resources and it will handle things better than KVM due to the nature of Xen and the Dom0 obviously a system running at 100% use will be a little slower but that is nothing to do with the virt type, I mean that if I took 2 identical servers and placed 60 identical guest OS's using 100% of the Ram on KVM and Xen that Xen would (and does) handle it better.

  • @AnthonySmith said:
    Anyway Sledger the reason is bad perception combined with assumptions with a hint of hipster :)

    If these are assumptions then why don't you show benchmarks and prove everything so more people can start using Xen HVM instead of responding everything with a one liner.

  • serverianserverian Member
    edited January 2014

    @AnthonySmith said:
    What I mean is you can sell 100% of the resources and it will handle things better than KVM due to the nature of Xen and the Dom0 obviously a system running at 100% use will be a little slower but that is nothing to do with the virt type, I mean that if I took 2 identical servers and placed 60 identical guest OS's using 100% of the Ram on KVM and Xen that Xen would (and does) handle it better.

    Here (an old benchmark), it shows KVM has lower CPU overage than Xen HVM: http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/219/4/042005/pdf/1742-6596_219_4_042005.pdf&embedded=true

Sign In or Register to comment.