[OpenIndiana-discuss] KVM and Xen support in OpenIndiana

[Nikola M]

Lukas Laukamp wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> at the moment I am search for alternativ OSes than linux which have
> KVM and Xen support. beside NetBSD and Illumos I also want to look at
> OpenIndiana.
>
> For KVM I found a port at github which semm to work but is in a
> testing/development state.
>
> For Xen I couldn't find that much so for me it's not clear if there is
> Dom0 support in OpenIndiana or whether there are plans to implement
> Dom0 support.
>
> When someone know more about that themes it would be great to get a
> reply with more information.
Hi to All new to Solaris and Illumos based, Openiniana :)
I hope you will find many benefits in using Solaris / Illumos based
systems but you
_really get to know what you will get with it's benefits_ and where it
shines comparing to other platforms.
If you know it, I hope choosing it would be more easy, primary from
Sysadmin perspective
that wants to have a life more easy and safer in a sense of doing your
work like you expect.
List of Illumos distributions:
http://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/Distributions

Those benefits include open source engineered Kernel with ZFS on the
upstream, Light virtualization with Zones, network virtualization with
crossbow, KVM integration, DTrace for live server debugging, better
hardware scalability, binary compatibility of applications between
releases, stable driver ABI, boot environments/snapshots,IP2
mutipathing/Load balancing, role based access control, etc.

Openindiana is Illumos based distribution, with IPS packaging as
continuation of Opensolaris and is made of mostly same user space
packages as Solaris11, plus OI additional IPS publishers/repositories.
It is available both in text-only install (server) and with Desktop, as
the truly Opensolaris continuation.

http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/1.+Introduction
https://hg.openindiana.org/
http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Package+Repositories

KVM for Illumos is made for SmartOS (Joyent company made it for a cloud)
and is now available in Openindiana.
Officially, KVM for Illumos supports Intel CPU's with EPT instruction set.

http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/KVM

Illumos KVM is used in production in Joyent for large scale
virtualization for real-world customers and is available in Openindiana.
Version for AMD CPUs and Intel without EPT is in development and need
community backing.

http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Hardware+Requirements#HardwareRequirements-KVMRequirements
https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm/

Illumos distributions and Openindiana support running as domU .
Xen (dom0) support was available in Opensolaris 2009.06 till Opensolaris
snv_134 , but
aether Oracle ditched it from source before renamed it to it's closed
source product on Solaris11,
and Illumos does not have it in the code tree, because it was removed
from OS/Net before Oracle forked it to closed source and Illumos
established itself.

So kernel implementation and source for Xen dom0 exists, but needs to be
revived and renewsed for Illumos ,included back and developed further,
just community need to activate itself with _supporting development
where it is left.

Same goes for Open HA - high availability that was last time available
for Opensolaris 2009.06 (111b)
and was tighten to release binaries. It would also be nice to have
community backing it and reviving it or at least preparing it for OI
stable to be released with it.
But there is working alternative, based on **PaceMaker/ Heartbeat ,
see: http://wiki.openindiana.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=23855106

Hope this is all you need for a start :)