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Xen vs KVM
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Xen vs KVM

Recently, a pretty large VPS provider asked me about why KVM is so popular. My response was "I don't know..." So, for all of you Low Enders, I have a simple question. KVM vs Xen (at the same price/resource point): which and why?

Comments

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran
    edited July 2014

    1 - Harder to oversell;
    2 - Virtio drivers really do help you increasing the container performance;
    3 - Most OS support KVM, so your client has several options to go with;
    4 - More secure than any other virtualization I ever tested;
    5 - It's a really well isolated container.

    Edit: How the hell do I fix my post format? o.O

  • comXyzcomXyz Member

    KVM vs Xen (at the same price/resource point): which and why?

    I really don't know. But I've used some KVM and Xen HVM VPS. I used them to run Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard, and with similar specs, KVM VPSes give me better performance.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider
    edited July 2014

    @MrGeneral KVM is not harder to oversell than Xen, did I miss understand you?

    KVM does out perform Xen these days though, Xen still has the edge in stability imo due to the separation however users don't really concern themselves with that I suppose :) and rightly so, that is a hosts problem.

  • W3HostW3Host Member

    @MrGeneral said:
    1 - Harder to oversell;
    2 - Virtio drivers really do help you increasing the container performance;
    3 - Most OS support KVM, so your client has several options to go with;
    4 - More secure than any other virtualization I ever tested;
    5 - It's a really well isolated container.

    Edit: How the hell do I fix my post format? o.O

    Use <'br'> on each line, without the quotation marks.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    You have to compare KVM with Xen HVM since PV only support linux OS as guests.

    For me as a end-user it's not that big a difference with all these control panels that providers use.

    The main difference is what the admin feels comfortable working with.
    It's like asking which is better, php or asp? Win or Mac?

    I'm sure that if a KVM master and Xen master got acces to the same hardware, the difference might not be that much when it comes to performance.

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @AnthonySmith said:
    MrGeneral KVM is not harder to oversell than Xen, did I miss understand you?

    Harder than OpenVZ, for example.

    KVM does out perform Xen these days though, Xen still has the edge in stability imo due to the separation however users don't really concern themselves with that I suppose :) and rightly so, that is a hosts problem.

    Agreed!

  • @Steven_F said:
    Recently, a pretty large VPS provider asked me about why KVM is so popular.

    Well more direct to that point, RHEL dropped the xen kernel with RHEL6, making it slightly more annoying to get xen up and running. At the same time, they went all in with KVM making that extremely simple. IMHO, that's where the popularity contest played out.

    We still use XenServer in our cloud infrastructure and that's been rock solid. From a strictly technical standpoint I think you'd be hard pressed to see much difference between xen and kvm in daily use.

  • Big companies like to use Xen because of its built-up stability in the past decade, the tools and extensions developed based off Xen and the number of server administrators experienced with Xen.

    Just for hosting companies: Rackspace, AWS, Linode, etc.

  • @sundaymouse said:
    Big companies like to use Xen because of its built-up stability in the past decade, the tools and extensions developed based off Xen and the number of server administrators experienced with Xen.

    Just for hosting companies: Rackspace, AWS, Linode, etc.

    Not so sure. Pretty sure they use it due to legacy (its age) and the people being skilled at it.

  • RalliasRallias Member
    edited August 2014

    MikHo said: You have to compare KVM with Xen HVM since PV only support linux OS as guests.

    http://www.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto.html

    http://bderzhavets.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/set-up-solaris-11-express-pv-guest-at-xen-4-0-1-2-6-32-26-pvops-dom0-on-top-of-f14/

    I didn't know NetBSD and Solaris ran on Linux kernels.

    To be honest, a PROPERLY CONFIGURED Xen system will always outperform KVM, even with Windows-based operating systems (cough veridian cough)

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