AWS still using XEN?

hanoi

I heard that they migrated to KVM-based but seem they still using XEN for Lightsail
Just spin up an instance ($10) in Singapore and here it is:

 Region: Asia  https://bench.monster v.1.5.6 2020-06-21 
 Usage : curl -LsO bench.monster/speedtest.sh; bash speedtest.sh -Asia

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 OS           : Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (64 Bit)
 Virt/Kernel  : Xen / 5.4.0-1018-aws
 CPU Model    : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30GHz
 CPU Cores    : 1 @ 2300.065 MHz x86_64 46080 KB Cache
 CPU Flags    : AES-NI Enabled & VM-x/AMD-V Disabled
 Load Average : 0.56, 0.23, 0.14
 Total Space  : 59G (1.6G ~3% used)
 Total RAM    : 1985 MB (157 MB + 987 MB Buff in use)
 Total SWAP   : 0 MB (0 MB in use)
 Uptime       : 0 days 0:21
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ASN & ISP    : AS16509, Amazon Technologies Inc.
 Organization : AWS EC2 (ap-southeast-1)
 Location     : Singapore, Singapore / SG
 Region       : 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 ## Geekbench v4 CPU Benchmark:

  Single Core : 3332  (VERY GOOD)
   Multi Core : 3178

 ## IO Test

 CPU Speed:
    bzip2     :  96.4 MB/s
   sha256     : 153 MB/s
   md5sum     : 411 MB/s

 RAM Speed:
   Avg. write : 1945.6 MB/s
   Avg. read  : 5154.1 MB/s

 Disk Speed:
   1st run    : 67.2 MB/s
   2nd run    : 64.5 MB/s
   3rd run    : 64.3 MB/s
   -----------------------
   Average    : 65.3 MB/s

 ## Asia Speedtest.net

 Location                         Upload           Download         Ping   
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nearby                           901.11 Mbit/s    911.70 Mbit/s    2.588 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 India, New Delhi (Weebo)         239.11 Mbit/s    88.20 Mbit/s     67.359 ms
 India, Mumbai (SevenStar)        209.71 Mbit/s    71.08 Mbit/s     66.221 ms
 India, Bengaluru (I-ON)          244.24 Mbit/s    78.43 Mbit/s     41.231 ms
 Sri Lanka, Colombo (Telecom PLC) 289.74 Mbit/s    272.73 Mbit/s    34.332 ms
 Pakistan, Islamabad (Telenor)    21.08 Mbit/s     83.43 Mbit/s    107.053 ms
 Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (Mobicom)  115.49 Mbit/s    47.77 Mbit/s     86.169 ms
 Bangladesh, Dhaka (Skytel)       183.26 Mbit/s    76.69 Mbit/s     49.019 ms
 Bhutan, Thimphu (Bhutan Telecom) 39.26 Mbit/s     14.55 Mbit/s     85.748 ms
 Myanmar, Mandalay (Ooredoo)      262.04 Mbit/s    190.67 Mbit/s    50.475 ms
 Laos, Vientaine (Mangkone)       146.73 Mbit/s    159.34 Mbit/s    40.496 ms
 Thailand, Bangkok (CAT Telecom)  369.89 Mbit/s    146.99 Mbit/s    26.373 ms
 Cambodia, Phnom Penh (Smart)     316.39 Mbit/s    155.55 Mbit/s    39.953 ms
 Vietnam, Hanoi (Viettel)         331.92 Mbit/s    83.94 Mbit/s     35.165 ms
 Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur (Extreme) 551.89 Mbit/s    158.91 Mbit/s    12.474 ms
 Singapore (PT FirstMedia)        876.10 Mbit/s    919.16 Mbit/s     0.962 ms
 Indonesia, Jakarta (Desnet)      308.24 Mbit/s    481.79 Mbit/s    13.498 ms
 Philippines, Manila (Globe Tel)  113.38 Mbit/s    80.72 Mbit/s     39.914 ms
 Hong Kong (fdcservers)           325.41 Mbit/s    118.58 Mbit/s    36.582 ms
 Taiwan, Taipei (TAIFO)           168.33 Mbit/s    42.78 Mbit/s     81.855 ms
 Japan, Tsukuba (SoftEther)       229.54 Mbit/s    100.16 Mbit/s    69.491 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Timestamp   : 2021-10-02 20:43:11 GMT

kheng86

I always thought it was KVM

Neoon

KVM here, on Lightsail Seoul

giang

Is there any big difference between Xen and KVM?

DP

I have one in SG too.

root@prysm:~# systemd-detect-virt
xen

warih

@giang said:
Is there any big difference between Xen and KVM?

I have same question

webcraft

@giang said:
Is there any big difference between Xen and KVM?

If it's Xen HVM and not Xen PV, I suppose there's barely any difference. I can't recall anybody complained about performance because of virt type, so from this point it should be comparable.

LordSpock

AWS were heavily invested in Xen for a long time and some of their old instance types (I believe C4 and below) are still powered by Xen. They moved to KVM in the late 2010s but had altered it to make it more similar to Xen.

Lightsail tends to use the older types of instances in regions that are a bit older/they have older instances free - so that might explain the Xen. I think Lightsail is a Kimsufi/SYS style idea -- flog the older hardware that's already had a lot of money made out of it.

TimboJones

Asked and answered by OP himself.

hanoi

@LordSpock said:
AWS were heavily invested in Xen for a long time and some of their old instance types (I believe C4 and below) are still powered by Xen. They moved to KVM in the late 2010s but had altered it to make it more similar to Xen.

Lightsail tends to use the older types of instances in regions that are a bit older/they have older instances free - so that might explain the Xen. I think Lightsail is a Kimsufi/SYS style idea -- flog the older hardware that's already had a lot of money made out of it.

Thanks, make sense, Lightsail is one of the best lowend for Asia location ( because high price for IPs & bandwidth in Asia)

jh

It's not the same Xen that cheapo SolusVM provider use. AWS has invested heavily in building on top of it and building custom hardware for it.