34,333
edits
Changes
→Full Virtualization vs. Para-Virtualization
== Full Virtualization vs. Para-Virtualization ==
There are two common approaches to virtualization - full virtualization and para-virtualization. Full virtualization provided complete abstraction between the hardware and the guest operating system. In this scenario, the guest operating system is provided a complete virtual physical environment in which to run and, as such, is unaware that it is running inside a virtual machine. One advantage of full virtualization is that the operating system does not need to be modified in order to run in a virtualized environment. This means that proprietary operating systems such as Windows can be run on Linux systems, and vice versa. Another key feature of full virtualization is that running guest systems can be migrated from one physical server to another - a popular requirement in enterprise environments.
Disadvantages of full virtualization are that performance is slightly reduced as compared to para-virtualization, and some virtualization platforms, such as Xen, require CPUs with special virtualization support built in.
Para-virtualization requires that a guest operating system be modified to support virtualization. This typically means that guest operating systems are limited to open source systems such as Linux. It is also not possible to migrate a running guest OS from one server to another. The advantage to this approach, however, is that a para-virtualized guest system comes closer to native performance than a fully virtualized guest.
== Checking Xen Hardware Compatibility ==
