VMware ESXi Licensing and Quality
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost... ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period. Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it) Thanks. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
On 2017-10-13 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost... ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
Thanks.
What are your design priorities? -- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.com/w/ "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
On 13 October 2017 at 12:36, Digimer <lists@alteeve.ca> wrote:
On 2017-10-13 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware. vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
Thanks.
What are your design priorities?
That's a very broad question and I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for details on, but I'll explain what I'm using it for and hope that covers it. A lot of my work (the employment type, not the personal type) involves remote VMs. I have a i5 NUC at home with 16G of RAM that I've used Proxmox on to turn it into a miniature VM farm. This is useful both to learn about how VMs are handled, and for me to make better use of the NUC by splitting it into multiple experimental machines that aren't all on at the same time. So - home use. And part of the reason that ESXi sounded interesting is that it seems to be more scriptable from the command line for managing VMs - although I freely admit I haven't investigated that worth a damn on Proxmox. I'd probably be pissed to lose Proxmox's graphical interface: I know ESXi has vSphere, but I probably wouldn't install that. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
On 2017-10-13 01:06 PM, Giles Orr wrote:
On 13 October 2017 at 12:36, Digimer <lists@alteeve.ca <mailto:lists@alteeve.ca>> wrote:
On 2017-10-13 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote: > I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. > It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's > "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to > use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that > it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( > https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost... <https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html> > ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period. > > Which brings up a few questions: > - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at > all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy > with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which > is more open source friendly) > - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're > on the free licensing? > - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent > license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for > anything" (point applies even though they fixed it) > > Thanks.
What are your design priorities?
That's a very broad question and I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for details on, but I'll explain what I'm using it for and hope that covers it.
Availability, performance or maximum resource utilization efficiency.
A lot of my work (the employment type, not the personal type) involves remote VMs. I have a i5 NUC at home with 16G of RAM that I've used Proxmox on to turn it into a miniature VM farm. This is useful both to learn about how VMs are handled, and for me to make better use of the NUC by splitting it into multiple experimental machines that aren't all on at the same time.
So - home use.
The Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) is a great front-end for KVM/qemu VMs, and it is a totally open source platform. The performance of KVM/qemu is great, and windows guests have signed drivers for the virtio network and storage drivers (making them very performant).
And part of the reason that ESXi sounded interesting is that it seems to be more scriptable from the command line for managing VMs - although I freely admit I haven't investigated that worth a damn on Proxmox. I'd probably be pissed to lose Proxmox's graphical interface: I know ESXi has vSphere, but I probably wouldn't install that.
The 'virsh' command line tool is extremely powerful for managing KVM/qemu guests. Our Anvil! platform is basically a customized front-end for virsh and there hasn't been an issue before we couldn't resolve. I think both proxmox and VMWare are overkill and not really aimed at what it sounds like you're after. -- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.com/w/ "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
On 10/13/2017 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost... ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
I have clients using VMware and Proxmox and VirtualBox and I use virt-manager and OpenStack for my own use. VMware and VirtualBox tend to do better on windows systems and stuff like USB devices and both are really easy to use to put up one of virtual machines. Both also have CLI interfaces that can be used if your desperate. There are some add on packages for VirtualBox to give it a GUI Proxmox is more or less the moral equivalent of virt-manager that can only manage continers and KVM along with some hooks for HA. Proxmox has the upside of a web interface where virt-manager is an X based application. Virt-manger has the upside of letting you manage a variety of virtualization engines beyond KVM. For small sized personal/experimental use all are acceptable. Proxmox has the upside that you can use it like an appliance and just install it fairly trivially. Virt-manager works nicely if you like managing the OS that your virtualiztion sits on top of. If you have complex networking or storage requirements then something like OpenStack or the other cloud managers start to make sense but the minimum size there is 3-5 machines before it begins to make sense. I would say stick with Proxmox. What is your Proxmox problem? -- Alvin Starr || land: (905)513-7688 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||
On 13 October 2017 at 13:47, Alvin Starr <alvin@netvel.net> wrote:
On 10/13/2017 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMw are-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFC C64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
I have clients using VMware and Proxmox and VirtualBox and I use virt-manager and OpenStack for my own use.
VMware and VirtualBox tend to do better on windows systems and stuff like USB devices and both are really easy to use to put up one of virtual machines. Both also have CLI interfaces that can be used if your desperate. There are some add on packages for VirtualBox to give it a GUI
Proxmox is more or less the moral equivalent of virt-manager that can only manage continers and KVM along with some hooks for HA. Proxmox has the upside of a web interface where virt-manager is an X based application. Virt-manger has the upside of letting you manage a variety of virtualization engines beyond KVM.
For small sized personal/experimental use all are acceptable. Proxmox has the upside that you can use it like an appliance and just install it fairly trivially. Virt-manager works nicely if you like managing the OS that your virtualiztion sits on top of.
If you have complex networking or storage requirements then something like OpenStack or the other cloud managers start to make sense but the minimum size there is 3-5 machines before it begins to make sense.
I would say stick with Proxmox.
What is your Proxmox problem?
Umm - laziness? The more I think about it, the more it seems like a good idea to stick with what I've got. Thanks Digimer and Alvin for making me think about it. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 01:47:34PM -0400, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
VMware and VirtualBox tend to do better on windows systems and stuff like USB devices and both are really easy to use to put up one of virtual machines.
Hmm... I have to use VM (VMware and VirtualBox) at work, and I'm having all sorts of problems with USB sticks. Mainly, VM will recognize them the first time and can mount them. But, VM will not un-mount. After that, I have to shutdown the guest, then VMware/VirtualBox, wait 10 sec (VirtualBox has tendency to stick around), rerun VMware/VirtualBox, and boot the guest. -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:33:06PM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost... ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
ESXi when you install it gives you a 60 day evaluation with full features. If you don't enter a license within 60 days, or if you enter a license for the free version, then you get the limited set of features instead. Limited seems to mean: Can't manage it with vCentre, can't have more than two CPU sockets in your server, can't have more than 8 virtual CPUs per VM, no support from vmware, and probably some other things. In older versions there was a limit of 32GB ram, but there is no limit on that anymore. So for a lot of use cases, it works fine, and of course vmware hopes you will like it and want some more features and start paying for those. Personally I think kvm is much nicer than vmware to deal with and more flexible. -- Len Sorensen
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( https://docs.vmware.com/en/ VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID- 7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period.
Which brings up a few questions: - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which is more open source friendly) - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're on the free licensing? - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for anything" (point applies even though they fixed it)
I have the free, as in no-cost, VMware ESxi 6.5 hypervisor installed on a bare metal server. I got it here: < https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6>. You'll have to register to download it. There is a permanent, as in not time-limited, license key there. It's restricted to two CPU sockets. The server on which I have it installed has two Xeon L5630 CPUs and 72GB of RAM. ESXi is able to access all the hardware resources I have. I recently installed the latest updates also available from the same place as above. Here are a few observations about VMware. VMware seems to go out of their way to name thing as confusingly as possible. I still have no idea what the difference is between "VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5" and "VMware ESXi 6.5". I think it's two names for the same thing. The term "vSphere" seems to be a range of products. VMware's web site does not make it easy to find what you want quickly. VMware's "partner programs" are, again, confusing and they seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for someone to figure out which, if any, of the programs would be suitable. By contrast, we have a Microsoft Action Pack subscription, which gets us NFR (Not for Resale) licenses of various Microsoft products - Windows, desktop and server, SQL Server, Office, Office 365, and a $100 per month credit towards Azure, and other things I don't remember right now, and it was dead easy to figure out that this was appropriate for us and to purchase it for less than $500 per year. I have come to the conclusion that VMware has no such program. They want a big commitment in terms of time and money from "partners" to get them on the VMware train. I'm only interested in VMware because our customers use it and we deliver the software we build on a virtual machine image running Debian. Initially, we only distributed VirtualBox images. It was easy enough to convert those VirtualBox images to Hyper-V images. We never found an easy way to convert to a VMware image so we installed ESXi 6.5 to be able to build and test VM images for our software. Someone mentioned that VMware and VirtualBox tend to do better on Windows systems. That is absolutely not true. First, VMware is not one uniform product. It's a company with a vast array of products, all of which have the word "VMware" in the name. Even if we narrowed it down to their virtualization products, VMware workstation and VMware ESXi are completely different virtualization technologies. The former is installed on a host OS, like Windows, macOS, or Linux. It's fine on all three of those operating systems, by the way. The latter is installed on bare metal and can host Windows, macOS (Apple's licensing issues notwithstanding), Linux, and even other instances of ESXi. I will be installing ESXi 5.5 and 6 shortly on 6.5 in a "nested virtualization" configuration to be able to test our virtual machine images on 5.5, 6, and 6.5 without needing three separate physical servers. Nested virtualization is not something recommended for production but it's fine for lab use. ESXi 6.5 can be installed inside 15 minutes on bare metal. It's about as simple an installation process as it gets. ESXi 6.5 runs on a Linux kernel. I have no idea if they've modified the kernel and if they have, if they contribute their changes to upstream as they are required to do under the terms of the GPL. ESXi can be administered from a TUI (Text User Interface) or from a web interface. SSH and the ESXi shell are disabled by default. I find it odd that I get warnings that they're enabled and that I should disable them unless they are necessary for administrative purposes in the web interface. I can't imagine the web interface being more secure than key-based SSH authentication. There are many support resources provided by VMware and third parties that use a GUI admin client that was apparently deprecated in ESXi 6.5 so if you're watching a screencast of someone using the deprecated product, which only ran on Windows anyway, it will not be of any use. The web admin interface does not have the same look or feel or the same capabilities. My experience so far with VMware ESXi 6.5 is that it is a lean, fast, and capable virtualization technology. Over the last week, I have been migrating our previous VM image creation scripts, which were mostly BASH, to Packer <https://www.packer.io/>. Our customers run ESXi 5.5, 6, and 6.5 I found that modifying our BASH scripts to generate images that are compatible with ESXi 5.5 through 6.5 to be more work than switching everything to Packer and even then, supporting three VMware targets is challenging. I had to open a range of ports in the ESXi firewall for Packer to be able to automate the installation over VNC. It took more effort than it should have to do that because many of the resources that I found were for older versions. If you have no specific need, as I do, to use VMware ESXi, I don't know if it is appropriate for you. Your expertise with Linux will give you some advantage but not as much as you would like. By the way, the Facebook license controversy you mention has been resolved due to significant backlash. See: < https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/26/facebook_license_surgery_on_react/
.
Regards, Clifford Ilkay 647-778-8696
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 03:23:50PM -0400, Clifford Ilkay via talk wrote:
ESXi 6.5 runs on a Linux kernel. I have no idea if they've modified the kernel and if they have, if they contribute their changes to upstream as they are required to do under the terms of the GPL.
Actually it does not. It uses some linux device drivers, but not a linux kernel. -- Len Sorensen
On 10/16/2017 02:37 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
ESXi 6.5 runs on a Linux kernel. I have no idea if they've modified the kernel and if they have, if they contribute their changes to upstream as they are required to do under the terms of the GPL. Actually it does not. It uses some linux device drivers, but not a
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 03:23:50PM -0400, Clifford Ilkay via talk wrote: linux kernel.
That's kind of interesting. Usually device drivers are intimately tied to the OS's design. What OS are they using? -- Alvin Starr || land: (905)513-7688 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||
On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 02:49:05PM -0400, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
That's kind of interesting. Usually device drivers are intimately tied to the OS's design. What OS are they using?
Their own. They have a linux compatible driver interface so that they can use linux drivers. After all, good luck convincing hardware makers to developer drivers for yet another OS. So it is often possible to compile a linux driver for ESXi and use it. Not always but often, at least for network cards and disk controllers. If you look at things like /proc, you will notice vmware looks a lot different than linux and has very little info there compared to linux. -- Len Sorensen
On 2017-10-16 02:49 PM, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
On 10/16/2017 02:37 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
ESXi 6.5 runs on a Linux kernel. I have no idea if they've modified the kernel and if they have, if they contribute their changes to upstream as they are required to do under the terms of the GPL. Actually it does not. It uses some linux device drivers, but not a
On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 03:23:50PM -0400, Clifford Ilkay via talk wrote: linux kernel.
That's kind of interesting. Usually device drivers are intimately tied to the OS's design. What OS are they using?
ESXi and Xen are 'type 1' hypervisors, in that they are their own operating system. Guests sit directly on top. VMs need to be patched to make use of the hypervisor's ability to use virtualization related CPU instructions. KVM, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V (I think) are considered type 2. They run a normal OS, and then provide an emulation layer for guest VMs. You can run normal processes on the host OS, because it is just running an extra set of processes to provide virtualization to guests. The guests don't need to be modified at all, which is why it is easy to run any OS on a type 2 hypervisor. You'll also see the term VMM used interchangeably with hypervisor. How the type of VMM relates to device drivers and licensing, I really can't say. Cheers, Jamon
On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 08:56:28PM -0400, Jamon Camisso via talk wrote:
ESXi and Xen are 'type 1' hypervisors, in that they are their own operating system. Guests sit directly on top. VMs need to be patched to make use of the hypervisor's ability to use virtualization related CPU instructions.
KVM, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V (I think) are considered type 2. They run a normal OS, and then provide an emulation layer for guest VMs. You can run normal processes on the host OS, because it is just running an extra set of processes to provide virtualization to guests. The guests don't need to be modified at all, which is why it is easy to run any OS on a type 2 hypervisor.
Most guests run fine unmodifed on ESXi so that really has nothing to do with it. And hyper-v requires guests that explicitly support it if you want to run a gen2 hyper-v rather than the original gen1. So type 1 or 2 has nothing to do with the guest being modified or not. xen I believe requires guests that are xen compatible, while kvm does not require it (and uses qemu to emulate legacy hardware as needed), but kvm can perform better (as can most hypervisors) if the guest is helping and vm aware. So virtualbox, virtualpc and vmware workstation are type 2. kvm is in fact a type 1 (it runs in the OS kernel and uses hardware assistance to implement the virtualization. Being able to run other apps on the host has nothing to do with it). At least IBM says kvm is a type 1 hypervisor and they have been doing virtualization probably longer than anyone else. Hyper-v is also a type 1 hypervisor. The distinction isn't really that clear in a lot of cases these days. Certainly if it is a dedicated hypervisor OS, like xenserver or esxi, it is obviously type 1 and if it runs purely as an application like vmware workstation, virtualpc and virtualbox, then it is clearly type 2. If it runs built into an otherwise general purpose OS like hyper-v and kvm, well that it becomes less obvious, although apparently at least IBM (and some others) say that because of the direct hardware access, they are type 1, and essentially are just hypervisors with a lot of extra capabilities outside the virtualization part.
You'll also see the term VMM used interchangeably with hypervisor.
How the type of VMM relates to device drivers and licensing, I really can't say.
-- Len Sorensen
On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 08:56:28PM -0400, Jamon Camisso via talk wrote:
ESXi and Xen are 'type 1' hypervisors, in that they are their own operating system. Guests sit directly on top. VMs need to be patched to make use of the hypervisor's ability to use virtualization related CPU instructions.
KVM, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V (I think) are considered type 2. They run a normal OS, and then provide an emulation layer for guest VMs. You can run normal processes on the host OS, because it is just running an extra set of processes to provide virtualization to guests. The guests don't need to be modified at all, which is why it is easy to run any OS on a type 2 hypervisor. Most guests run fine unmodifed on ESXi so that really has nothing to do with it. And hyper-v requires guests that explicitly support it if you want to run a gen2 hyper-v rather than the original gen1.
So type 1 or 2 has nothing to do with the guest being modified or not.
xen I believe requires guests that are xen compatible, while kvm does not require it (and uses qemu to emulate legacy hardware as needed), but kvm can perform better (as can most hypervisors) if the guest is helping and vm aware. Xen does not require the guest to be VM aware and uses the more or less
On 10/17/2017 10:13 AM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote: the same code as KVM to do the legacy hardware support. Someone with an OpenStack integration company told me that Hyper-V is actually Xen re-branded but I have not found anything to prove or disprove that. With Xen being OpenSource it would be easy for someone to create a clone that is ClosedSource. Xen uses a virtualized operating system to manage things like disks, networks and legacy hardware emulation and this Dom0 needs to be aware that it is running on Xen. Other hosted VMs can get better performance if they use the para-virtualization features of Xen but it is not a requirement. Its just my opinion but I believe: VMware and VirtualBox tend to have better hardware emulation with things like windows clients because they have business reason to support windows and put programmer resources into doing that. Where KVM,Qemu,Xen(as opposed to Citrix xenserver) are supported mostly by people who will "clean toilets but refuse to do windows" so non-linux friendly hardware tends to get forgotten about.
So virtualbox, virtualpc and vmware workstation are type 2. kvm is in fact a type 1 (it runs in the OS kernel and uses hardware assistance to implement the virtualization. Being able to run other apps on the host has nothing to do with it). At least IBM says kvm is a type 1 hypervisor and they have been doing virtualization probably longer than anyone else. Hyper-v is also a type 1 hypervisor. The distinction isn't really that clear in a lot of cases these days. Certainly if it is a dedicated hypervisor OS, like xenserver or esxi, it is obviously type 1 and if it runs purely as an application like vmware workstation, virtualpc and virtualbox, then it is clearly type 2. If it runs built into an otherwise general purpose OS like hyper-v and kvm, well that it becomes less obvious, although apparently at least IBM (and some others) say that because of the direct hardware access, they are type 1, and essentially are just hypervisors with a lot of extra capabilities outside the virtualization part.
It is pretty fuzzy and I would argue that by the current definition they are all Type-1 and Type-2 at the same time. Possibly a better definition would be Type-1 is where the hypervisor is a microkernel that an OS sits on top of and everything else is Type-2. But that is just my take on it.
You'll also see the term VMM used interchangeably with hypervisor.
How the type of VMM relates to device drivers and licensing, I really can't say.
-- Alvin Starr || land: (905)513-7688 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||
participants (7)
-
Alvin Starr -
Clifford Ilkay -
Digimer -
Giles Orr -
Jamon Camisso -
lsorense＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca -
William Park