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5 Replies Last post: May 3, 2008 8:58 AM by jedijeff
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paravirtualization

May 2, 2008 5:56 PM

Click to view jedijeff's profile Novice jedijeff 22 posts since
Mar 28, 2008

I am running SLES10SP1 which has support for paravirtualization(it was added in SP1). My host is ESX3.5

I am a bit confused if I should enable the paravirtualization box on the sles guest. Will it increase performance? What are the downsides?

Thanks!


Reply Re: paravirtualization May 2, 2008 6:14 PM
Click to view chucks0's profile Enthusiast chucks0 88 posts since
Feb 2, 2005

I'm not sure if VMI is included in SLES10 SP1. With an Ubuntu 7.04 VM, after enabling VMI, I get the following when executing "dmesg | grep vmi"

vmi: registering clock event vmi-timer. mult=10041167 shift=22
Booting paravirtualized kernel on vmi

When enabling VMI on a SLES10 SP1 VM, "dmesg | grep vmi" returns nothing


Reply Re: paravirtualization May 2, 2008 6:31 PM
in response to: chucks0
Click to view jedijeff's profile Novice jedijeff 22 posts since
Mar 28, 2008
hmm...maybe I misread the sles10 info...maybe it was talking about vmi available with XEN?
Reply Re: paravirtualization May 3, 2008 6:38 AM
in response to: jedijeff
Click to view Texiwill's profile Guru Texiwill 9,498 posts since
Jan 13, 2004 Moderator
Hello,

Paravirtualization within a Linux guest applies only to Xen. However, if you install VMware Tools you have a few VMware drivers available to you. vmxnet, balloon driver, etc. That is as close to paravirtualized you will get with VMware products.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization
Reply Re: paravirtualization May 3, 2008 8:50 AM
in response to: Texiwill
Click to view chucks0's profile Enthusiast chucks0 88 posts since
Feb 2, 2005

This isn't completely true. ESX 3.5 includes VMI paravirtualization support for linux guests that support it. VMI support has been built into the latest linux kernels. I have tested and verified it with the latest versions of Ubuntu and OpenSuse. VMI support is supposed to be incorporated into the next releases of the enterprise linux versions as well.

Texiwill wrote:Hello,

Paravirtualization within a Linux guest applies only to Xen. However, if you install VMware Tools you have a few VMware drivers available to you. vmxnet, balloon driver, etc. That is as close to paravirtualized you will get with VMware products.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

Reply Re: paravirtualization May 3, 2008 8:58 AM
in response to: chucks0
Click to view jedijeff's profile Novice jedijeff 22 posts since
Mar 28, 2008
Thanks for the info!
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