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How is Xen better in this context than a general-purpose OS kernel, be it Linux, BSD, or Illumos? For a "truly elastic cloud", what one really needs is a homog
by mwcampbell 14y ago
How is Xen better in this context than a general-purpose OS kernel, be it Linux, BSD, or Illumos?
For a "truly elastic cloud", what one really needs is a homogeneous pool of host machines on which heterogeneous workloads can be quickly started and stopped. For this, I believe a general-purpose OS kernel is better, even if one dispenses with the usual accompanying userland, because such a kernel is already equipped to run more workloads directly.
- philsnow 14y agoWhy should the pool of host machines be homogeneous ? Just for ease of administration ?
- pjmlp 14y agoBecause it follows a picokernel model, where it runs an hypervisor directly on top of the hardware to assure the minimal set of hardware integration features. Everything else not required by your application just wastes hardware resources. This allows for a higher use of applications per physical machine.