The end of paravirt_ops? [LWN.net]

The end of paravirt_ops?

Posted Sep 25, 2009 8:56 UTC (Fri) by pcampe (guest, #28223)
Parent article: The end of paravirt_ops?

On this article, "A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization", VMWare said that hardware virtualization was not acceptable from a performance point of view; good to see they have completely changed their point of view.

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The end of paravirt_ops: vmware change of attitude

Posted Sep 25, 2009 16:03 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

[In] this article, "A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization", VMWare said that hardware virtualization was not acceptable from a performance point of view; good to see they have completely changed their point of view.

Did they say it was not acceptable? I think they just said it is slower.

And I don't think point of view is what changed. It is a technical paper, and quite objective.

The end of paravirt_ops?

Posted Oct 5, 2009 9:30 UTC (Mon) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]

You forgot to give a link (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/asplos235_adams.pdf)
to the paper and the fact that it is three years old.

So the updated story, in a nutshell, is that the first-generation HW
virtualisation (which was state of the art in 2006) is generally slower
than their binary translation technique. Second-generation (EPT, RVI)
features on the other hand do improve performance, are often used by
default, and even a requirement for some VM configurations. Details:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/perf-vsphere-monitor_mode...
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_ESX_Intel-EPT-eval.pdf
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/RVI_performance.pdf