KVM and XEN

hokie1999 · 02-27-2011, 05:18 PM

At linux-kvm.org it is stated:

"KVM ... consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko that provides the core virtualization infrastructure"

and yet there's no mention of Xen, which runs as the hypervisor with KVM. The site seems to be implying the module is the hypervisor.

My question to you is: What is the relationship between KVM and Xen on a server that is "running KVM"? Thanks for your input.

paulsm4 · 02-27-2011, 05:57 PM

Xen is a hypervisor.

KVM is a different hypervisor. Redhat and Fedora, for example, have deprecated Xen in favor of KVM.

VMWare ESX/vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V are other examples of hypervisors.

'Hope that helps .. PSM

hokie1999 · 02-28-2011, 09:12 AM

PSM, thanks, it appears that when I installed "Virtualization" as a group package on Centos 5.5 during the installation, Xen is what I got [I was expecting KVM]. I later reinstalled the OS and manually installed KVM [yum -y install kvm, kmod_kvm ....] and I got KVM. So all is well and now I know the difference.