[Novalug] Re: virtualization Now

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008, Paul W. Frields wrote:

> Running OSes without the availability of these special hooks requires
> "full virtualization."  If you want to run a Windows XP guest -- where
> you have no option to change the kernel, yay proprietary OSes! -- it
> will probably be quite slow... from noticeable to unbearable depending
> on your expectations.  VMWare gets around this problem with some slick
> (and unfortunately proprietary) kernel modules and guest-domain tools,
> but with newer CPUs people can get great results from FOSS stacks.  With
> hardware virt capability, you can run a fully virtualized Windows XP
> guest at near-native speed on top of FOSS software, which helps for
> those pesky situations (like corporate requirements) where you need to
> have a proprietary OS at hand.

http://virtualbox.org/

They rewrite code containing privileged instructions into paravirtualized
code - giving near VMWare speed without hardware virtualization. 
Caveat - it punts back to traditional emulation if it can't figure
out how to safely rewrite.  This is highly heuristic:  supported
OSes (XP, Vista) run fast.  Others will run, but slowly (e.g. Win98).

It is open source with the "stale bread" business model.  The latest
speed enhancing heuristics are for sale, and older versions are GPL.
Presumably services to make any arbitrary OS run faster are for sale also.

-- 
 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.