According to an interview a zdnet interview with RedHat CTO Brian Stevens, Fedora 7 will include KVM. This is a major step for the relatively new open source virtualization technology. KVM was recently officially added to the Linux kernel.

How will this effect Xen? It appears that RedHat is behind KVM and investing a significant amount of time and effort into developing it. According to the ZDNET article:

“Stevens also likes the technical approach that Moshe Bar, CTO of KVM backer Qumranet, took with KVM: “He absolutely nailed it,” Stevens said.

However, Stevens said, KVM lags another open-source virtualization technology, Xen, which is the single biggest new feature in the company’s upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. “There’s a year of work, I’d guess, to really make it at parity where Xen is today,” Stevens said.”

It would appear that will inclusion into the Linux kernel, and now inclusion into Fedora we can expect to see KVM offered in RedHat’s Enterprise Linux offering in the next few years.

You can read the interview here.

Tags: KVM, Linux, Open Sourse, RedHat, Virtualization, Xen

KVM has officially been released in Linux Kernel 2.6.20 as of Feb 4. The inclusion of KVM in the Linux kernel instead of Xen doesn’t seem to bother Xen project leader Ian Pratt according to http://www.devxnews.com/.

“Xen is a true hypervisor, whereas KVM is a legacy virtualization solution akin to VMware Workstation, VMserver and Microsoft Virtual PC,” Pratt told internetnews.com. “It lacks the benefits of para-virtualization performance enhancements that have been pioneered by Xen and are now being copied by VMware and Microsoft.”

Ian also stated that he isn’t looking for Xen to be included in the Linux kernel anymore stating:

“Putting Xen into Linux doesn’t make sense: hypervisors are different beasts from operating systems, so they share little code.”

Of particular interest are the comments about VMware copying Xen’s para-virtualization techniques. Although I doubt VMware will comment, I’d love to hear what they have to say about that.

You can read the Devx article here.

I missed this when it was first released, but apparently Xensource has licensed the Microsoft VHD virtual disk specifications for Xen 3.0. Why does this bother me? Why should I care that an open source project is embracing Microsoft “standards”?

I care because the open source community has had great success in developing their own standards. Multiple people develop ideas, work on them, and then the best wins out. Not because Microsoft wants them to, but because it’s the best. Sure there are politics in the open source community, but it’s not the same.

This just helps Xen get in bed deeper with Microsoft. No wonder Linus chose to include KVM instead of Xen.

Read the article here:

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=31396&src=site-marq

Tags: Microsoft, Open Sourse, Xen

There have been some interesting changes in the open source world. After a lot of talk from Xen about being included in the Linux kernel, Linux has decided to include KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

This is very interesting considering all the work that Xen has done to try and be included in the Linux kernel and how long KVM has been around. So far, I haven’t found anything from Xensource about their reaction to this. I’m sure however that it will be spun in the nicest possbile manner.

Read the article here.