back to article Xen 4.11 debuts new ‘PVH’ guest type, for the sake of security

The Xen Project has released version 4.11 of its hypervisor. As we reported last week, it’s more than a month late, but the projects leaders thinks it is worth the wait because this release delivers on an ambition to “create a cleaner architecture for core technology, less code and a smaller computing base for security and …

  1. Lusty

    Are people still using Xen? I only saw the AWS thing today and they were one of the main backers. Just interested to see a quick poll of Reg readers using it in the enterprise, I'm not saying don't use it :)

    1. GrahamRJ

      I was, but only because I was clagging together a build cluster from old machines, and the company wasn't prepared to spring for VMware. And having got that build cluster working, Xen decided (in their less-than-infinite wisdom) to remove high-availability failover support from the free version, which was really the main reason for choosing XenServer in the first place.

      If I was still maintaining this, I'd probably be changing to Oracle's VM Server, which still uses Xen under the surface but doesn't feature-cripple it. I don't understand why the XenProject guys would want to crap on their users like that. I don't mind having a slightly less spiffy UI and less of the "pro" features, but surely high-availability is the single most important reason for running a cluster. Lose that and you lose the whole point of it.

      But since my company got bought out, everything's moving to a nice new server running VMware, so I don't need to worry about it any more.

      1. Nate Amsden

        high availability is nice though not really required for a bunch of workloads. I mean I ran vSphere from about 2006 to about 2010 with nothing other than standard edition (no HA, no vmotion, nothing). Ran everything from Oracle DB servers to web and app servers, etc(all of the VMs if I recall right were linux). First couple years(first company) didn't even have vcenter. For a while in 2009 at least I was able to buy vsphere essentials packs and get the hosts managed by vcenter standard edition (vmware closed that license hole a couple years later)

        I did have SAN storage though so if I needed to move a VM to another host I could do it(VM had to be powered off of course).

        Back in 2008 before I left that one company my (new) manager at the time wanted to switch to Xen. He didn't even like paying the lowball standard vsphere pricing we were paying I think it was $3k for a 2 socket server for standard edition(excluding support I think). We got into a big argument about it at one point. After I left the company he directed my remaining teammates to start working on Xen (CentOS 5.x I think at the time which among CentOS 4.x and RHEL and Fedora we used as guest OSs). They spent about a month trying to get it to work and gave up and went back to Vmware. The core issue they were having at the time was the need to run both 32 and 64-bit CentOS guest OSs, and one of those(assuming 32-bit it was a long time ago) simply wouldn't even boot(mailing lists etc provided no solution). Didn't talk to that manager again for years but have since made up he apologized to me which was nice, and said yes (at least at the time)Xen sucked and vmware was better.

        For the past 7 years or so at the current org everything is enterprise+, though I think the only real features of e+ that I use are VDS, DRS and host profiles. I'm probably a mix of a customer vmware would love and hate -- been using their stuff for 19 years now, very loyal customer(because of consistently good experiences) but at the same time not excited about any of their stuff other than the basics. vSphere 4.0 was the last product I was super excited about.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          32-bit & 64-bit has worked under Xen for many many many many many years.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Xen" and "XenServer" aren't really identical. While XenServer uses Xen, XenServer is a distribution that is heavily crippled without paying Citrix.

        You can do the HA stuff for free using your own distro & regular Xen.

      3. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Orv Silver badge

      I've mostly switched to KVM, not because I had any problems with Xen, but because KVM became CentOS's preferred VM.

      I had to run a VMware machine for a while once, in order to use a prefab VM appliance, and I can't say I enjoyed the experience. Although the console TUI did make me slightly nostalgic for Novell Netware.

      1. hack3rcon

        It is not odd because CentOS based on Red Hat and KVM is for Red Hat.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

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