[OpenIndiana-discuss] KVM and Xen support in OpenIndiana

[Lukas Laukamp]

Am 15.10.2012 10:44, schrieb 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 :)

Hello Nicola,

thanks for that comprehensiv reply. Unfortonatly I am not that good in 
software development to do such a thing. I could only help the 
development with testing results and so on. I think there must be found 
a few people who are interested in Xen Support for Illumos/OpenIndiana. 
So I don't know what I could do to get more involved in such a process.

Eventually someone has an idea how I can get more involved in such a 
development process.

Best Regards