trusty (4) xen.4freebsd.gz

NAME

     xen — Xen Hypervisor Guest (DomU) Support

SYNOPSIS

     To compile para-virtualized (PV) Xen guest support into an i386 kernel, place the following lines in your
     kernel configuration file:

           options PAE
           options XEN
           nooptions NATIVE

     To compile hardware-assisted virtualization (HVM) Xen guest support with para-virtualized drivers into an
     amd64 kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

           options XENHVM
           device xenpci

DESCRIPTION

     The Xen Hypervisor allows multiple virtual machines to be run on a single computer system.  When first
     released, Xen required that i386 kernels be compiled "para-virtualized" as the x86 instruction set was not
     fully virtualizable.  Primarily, para-virtualization modifies the virtual memory system to use hypervisor
     calls (hypercalls) rather than direct hardware instructions to modify the TLB, although para-virtualized
     device drivers were also required to access resources such as virtual network interfaces and disk devices.

     With later instruction set extensions from AMD and Intel to support fully virtualizable instructions,
     unmodified virtual memory systems can also be supported; this is referred to as hardware-assisted
     virtualization (HVM).  HVM configurations may either rely on transparently emulated hardware peripherals,
     or para-virtualized drivers, which are aware of virtualization, and hence able to optimize certain
     behaviors to improve performance or semantics.

     FreeBSD supports a fully para-virtualized (PV) kernel on the i386 architecture using options XEN and
     nooptions NATIVE; currently, this requires use of a PAE kernel, enabled via options PAE.

     FreeBSD supports hardware-assisted virtualization (HVM) on both the i386 and amd64 kernels; however, PV
     device drivers with an HVM kernel are only supported on the amd64 architecture, and require options XENHVM
     and device xenpci.

     Para-virtualized device drivers are required in order to support certain functionality, such as processing
     management requests, returning idle physical memory pages to the hypervisor, etc.

   Xen DomU device drivers
     Xen para-virtualized drivers are automatically added to the kernel if a PV kernel is compiled using options
     XEN; for HVM environments, options XENHVM and device xenpci are required.  The follow drivers are
     supported:

           balloon   Allow physical memory pages to be returned to the hypervisor as a result of manual tuning
                     or automatic policy.

           blkback   Exports local block devices or files to other Xen domains where they can then be imported
                     via blkfront.

           blkfront  Import block devices from other Xen domains as local block devices, to be used for file
                     systems, swap, etc.

           console   Export the low-level system console via the Xen console service.

           control   Process management operations from Domain 0, including power off, reboot, suspend, crash,
                     and halt requests.

           evtchn    Expose Xen events via the /dev/xen/evtchn special device.

           netback   Export local network interfaces to other Xen domains where they can be imported via
                     netfront.

           netfront  Import network interfaces from other Xen domains as local network interfaces, which may be
                     used for IPv4, IPv6, etc.

           pcifront  Allow physical PCI devices to be passed through into a PV domain.

           xenpci    Represents the Xen PCI device, an emulated PCI device that is exposed to HVM domains.  This
                     device allows detection of the Xen hypervisor, and provides interrupt and shared memory
                     services required to interact with the hypervisor.

   Performance considerations
     In general, PV drivers will perform better than emulated hardware, and are the recommended configuration
     for HVM installations.

     Using a hypervisor introduces a second layer of scheduling that may limit the effectiveness of certain
     FreeBSD scheduling optimisations.  Among these is adaptive locking, which is no longer able to determine
     whether a thread holding a lock is in execution.  It is recommended that adaptive locking be disabled when
     using Xen:

           options NO_ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES
           options NO_ADAPTIVE_RWLOCKS
           options NO_ADAPTIVE_SX

SEE ALSO

     pae(4)

HISTORY

     Support for xen first appeared in FreeBSD 8.1.

AUTHORS

     FreeBSD support for Xen was first added by Kip Macy <kmacy@FreeBSD.org> and Doug Rabson <dfr@FreeBSD.org>.
     Further refinements were made by Justin Gibbs <gibbs@FreeBSD.org>, Adrian Chadd <adrian@FreeBSD.org>, and
     Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>.  This manual page was written by Robert Watson
     <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>.

BUGS

     FreeBSD is only able to run as a Xen guest (DomU) and not as a Xen host (Dom0).

     A fully para-virtualized (PV) kernel is only supported on i386, and not amd64.

     Para-virtualized drivers under hardware-assisted virtualization (HVM) kernel are only supported on amd64,
     not i386.

     As of this release, Xen PV DomU support is not heavily tested; instability has been reported during VM
     migration of PV kernels.

     Certain PV driver features, such as the balloon driver, are under-exercised.