XenServer Feature Comparison
http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=2300456
Hardware Assisted Virtualization
Requires VT Hardware (Intel/AMD)
OS remains unchanged, uses generic device drivers
Paravirtualization
OS requires paravirtualized drivers
OS has direct access to host hardware
XenServer Architecture
http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/Citrix_XenServer_Vs_VMware.pdf
Architectural Components
- Hardware Layer: contains the physical server components
- Xen Hypervisor: (based on Xen 4.1) a thin layer of software that runs and allows mutiple VMs to run on the hardware
- Control Domain: a secure and privileged Linux VM with higher priority than any other VM on the XS host. Manages network and storage I/O of all VMs and runs XenServer management toolstack. Also known as Domain 0 or Dom0
- Windows / Linux VM: uses paravirtualized kernels (L) and drivers to access storage and network I/O through the control domain. CPU & RAM are communicated directly to the Xen Hypervisor
- Storage repositories (=VMware datastores): store virtual disks, host can have multiple SRs, can be shared between XS hosts
http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=2300456
Hardware Assisted Virtualization
Requires VT Hardware (Intel/AMD)
OS remains unchanged, uses generic device drivers
Paravirtualization
OS requires paravirtualized drivers
OS has direct access to host hardware
XenServer Architecture
http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/Citrix_XenServer_Vs_VMware.pdf
Architectural Components
- Hardware Layer: contains the physical server components
- Xen Hypervisor: (based on Xen 4.1) a thin layer of software that runs and allows mutiple VMs to run on the hardware
- Control Domain: a secure and privileged Linux VM with higher priority than any other VM on the XS host. Manages network and storage I/O of all VMs and runs XenServer management toolstack. Also known as Domain 0 or Dom0
- Windows / Linux VM: uses paravirtualized kernels (L) and drivers to access storage and network I/O through the control domain. CPU & RAM are communicated directly to the Xen Hypervisor
- Storage repositories (=VMware datastores): store virtual disks, host can have multiple SRs, can be shared between XS hosts