[Beowulf] HPC fault tolerance using virtualization

[Michael Di Domenico]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:58 PM, John Hearns<hearnsj at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2009/6/15 Michael Di Domenico <mdidomenico4 at gmail.com>:
>> Course having said all that, if you've been watching the linux-kernel
>> mailing list you've probably noticed the Xen/Kvm/Linux HV argument
>> that took place last week.  Makes me a little afraid to push any Linux
>> HV solution into to production, but it's a fun experiment none the
>> less...
>
> Could you please give us a summary? Really would be appreciated - I
> don't follow those lists that closely.
> I spent the last week in a small room with lots of racks, cables and
> blinking lights!

it was a little hard to follow as it turned into six arguments in one
thread like most mailing list arguments tend to do.  as best i could
tell there were three major things going on

1. whether to not to turn the linux kernel into a hypervisor or keep
things as they are with linux feeding scheduling and drivers to the
domains

2.  whether or not to add a xen branch to the linux kernel and make
xen a formal branch.  the xen guys claim this would require a long
time and too many changes on their part to fit the kernel build/coding
process

3.  general code quality with the xen patches.  linus showed the git
diff history between kvm and xen.  apparently xen pollutes the kernel
code base something fierce and it makes people unhappy.  apparently a
lot of xen patches get rejected

i'm not positive i've surmised everything that happened, but thats
what i took away from the threads.