Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A pared down kernel config

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 06 January 2008, reader@×××××××.com wrote:
> Erik <sigra@××××.se> writes:
> > reader@×××××××.com skrev:
> >> Then you are stuck figuring out what on earth a hypervisor is.
> >
> > Alt+F2
> > wp:hypervisor
> > ENTER
>
> Hey thats a pretty neat trick.  Now if I wondered if that would be
> important since I plan to run a vmware application... I will take
> more digging.  It mentions vmware but not clear if this is important
> to it.

No, it's not relevant in this case. vmware is a virtualisation app, but 
doesn't use a hypervisor - it's a regular application with some custom 
kernel modules. kvm, xen and (I think) qemu do use hypervisors so this 
feature needs to be in the kernel for them.

Virtualisation is a vast field covering many many different techniques, 
each with their own pros and cons. The technique vmware uses makes it 
very easy to install, use and configure your virtual machine (it's just 
a bunch of big files), but the performance frankly sucks. At the other 
extreme you get VServer which runs like a bomb but is tightly tied onto 
the host machine running it. Somewhere in the middle we have xen and 
it's simpler cousin kvm - due to hypervisors they give very good 
performance and are relatively easy to configure and maintain.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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