Xen 4.18 Hypervisor Released With Support For New AMD EPYC & Intel Xeon CPU Features

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xen 4.18 Hypervisor Released With Support For New AMD EPYC & Intel Xeon CPU Features

The Linux Foundation today announced the release of the Xen Project Hypervisor 4.18 for this open-source hypervisor that serves as an alternative to Linux KVM use...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Xen-4.18-Hypervisor

[Danniello]

Silly question: is there maybe some kind of Xen compatibility layer (or emulation) for KVM?

I'm asking because I would like to build Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops farm (in the past better known as Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop) - but it is supporting only XenServer, Hyper-V and VMware vSphere... No support for KVM... I could workaround it via nested virtualisation, ie. XenServer as VM on KVM host but it would be great to somehow "emulate" Xen directly on KVM

[Gro_]

Happy to see something new about XEN !! What a wonderfull, powerfull and simple solution. I use it every day, mainly in the network world (firewall, load-balancer,proxy, vpn, ...), extremely efficient, huge thanks to all the XEN's developers, you contribute to many many small companies success ! HUGES THANKS !!! You move the world forward, nothing less !

[OneTimeShot]

Silly question: is there maybe some kind of Xen compatibility layer (or emulation) for KVM?

I'm asking because I would like to build Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops farm (in the past better known as Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop) - but it is supporting only XenServer, Hyper-V and VMware vSphere... No support for KVM... I could workaround it via nested virtualisation, ie. XenServer as VM on KVM host but it would be great to somehow "emulate" Xen directly on KVM

I'm pretty sure XenServer is free to use if you are paying for Citrix licenses anyway (Hyper-V is free too with a Windows Server license). It seems like a big layer of complexity to want to use KVM. Years ago there was a Citrix SDK for integrating new hypervisors, that's probably the most technically reasonable route...

[Danniello]

I'm pretty sure XenServer is free to use if you are paying for Citrix licenses anyway (Hyper-V is free too with a Windows Server license). It seems like a big layer of complexity to want to use KVM. Years ago there was a Citrix SDK for integrating new hypervisors, that's probably the most technically reasonable route...

Yes, I know that threre is free edition of XenServer, but it would be nice to connect directly to my "native" KVM.

Maybe I'll explain what my situation is. I created "temporary private Citrix test farm" - everything on my one Linux desktop with 48GB RAM.

KVM host:

* guest: Win2019 VM with AD DC, AD CS, DNS, DHCP
* guest: Win2019 VM with SQL, Citrix License, Citrix Director
* guest: Win2019 VM with Citrix DDC
* guest: Win2019 VM with Citrix StoreFront
* guest: Win2019 VM with Citrix PVS
* guest: NetScaler
* guest: VM with Citrix XenServer

* nested guest inside XenServer: VDI Win10
* nested guest inside XenServer: VDI Win10
* nested guest inside XenServer: SBC Win2019
* nested guest inside XenServer: SBC Win2019

Like you see - there is plenty of VMs to start on my Linux with quite limited resources (48GB RAM). All other VMs I could heavily limit to use just 2GB RAM (or even less), but for XenServer I need allocate much more - at least 16GB RAM... With "direct connection" do KVM - XenServer as guest VM wouldn't be necessary

[binarybanana]

Silly question: is there maybe some kind of Xen compatibility layer (or emulation) for KVM?

I'm asking because I would like to build Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops farm (in the past better known as Citrix XenApp / XenDesktop) - but it is supporting only XenServer, Hyper-V and VMware vSphere... No support for KVM... I could workaround it via nested virtualisation, ie. XenServer as VM on KVM host but it would be great to somehow "emulate" Xen directly on KVM

https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/i386/xen.html

[Danniello]

https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/i386/xen.html

Hmmmm... Interesting...

`qemu-system-x86_64 --accel kvm,xen-version=0x40011,kernel-irqchip=split`

If I'm not mistaken - this command is meant to start VM that previously was hosted on XEN. So started guest VM will still "think" that underneath is XEN, so for example installed XenTools inside this VM should work OK.

If yes - it is not what I would like to accomplish. I would like to add KVM host itself into Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller or Citrix XenCenter - just like adding connection to supported XenServer host.

[binarybanana]

Hmmmm... Interesting...

`qemu-system-x86_64 --accel kvm,xen-version=0x40011,kernel-irqchip=split`

If I'm not mistaken - this command is meant to start VM that previously was hosted on XEN. So started guest VM will still "think" that underneath is XEN, so for example installed XenTools inside this VM should work OK.

If yes - it is not what I would like to accomplish. I would like to add KVM host itself into Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller or Citrix XenCenter - just like adding connection to supported XenServer host.

Sorry, you're right, I misunderstood your question.