ESX & VMI/paravirt_ops

[WillGreen]

Is there a summary of the state of VMI (paravirt_ops) on ESXi (3.5 and 4.0) and OS support for it?

I found this useful blog post about Linux kernel support for paravirt_ops, but it doesn't have any detail on ESXi:

Ideally I would like to use with 64-bit Linux guests.

Thanks,

Will

[admin]

ESX only supports VMI for 32-bit Linux guests. There is no VMI support in the 64-bit Linux kernel.

[WillGreen]

Is this still the case in ESXi 4? If so, has there been any indication of when 64-bit Linux guests will support VMI?

All our Linux installs are now 64-bit and the sort of applications that benefit most from VMI, e.g. databases need the larger memory space 64-bit provides.

Is there any way to tell from the VMware side whether VMI is being used by the guest?

[admin]

ESX 4.0 does not support 64-bit VMI. ESX 4.0 will continue to support 32-bit VMI, but there are no plans to support 64-bit VMI guests. Hardware-assisted MMU virtualization (available with AMD Phenom and Intel Core i7 processors) offers benefits comparable to VMI paravirtualization for all guest operating systems, both 32-bit and 64-bit.

I don't believe there is any indication from the VMware side whether or not the guest is actually using VMI. I could be wrong.

[WillGreen]

Thanks.

If I understand you correctly, this seems to suggest there's no point in VMware or operating systems supporting VMI/paravirt_ops in the medium term.

Would still be good to see a document from VMware discussing what their plans are in future.