Xen users - Feb 2008 - Direct Hardware Support using Xen and Windows Guest?

I have some questions about the use of Xen for a Windows guest. I started a
discussion elsewhere, but I wonder if anyone there knows the answers. 

If you would not mind, could you please read this thread and reply:
 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=705738
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=705738 

If you don''t wish to create an account on the Ubuntu forums, then
please
reply here. I will update the other thread for the Ubuntu users that are
following the thread with interest. Thank you.
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On Sunday 24 February 2008 06:50:07 pm T313C0mun1s7
wrote:
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=705738
> So the holy grail here would be being able to run Windows XP Pro SP2 (or
> SP3) as a guest OS on Ubuntu, and still have direct hardware access thus
> allowing me to still have full use of my video card, DVD burner, and
> hardware dongles (tied to software licensing) without any issues.
> Performance is still an issue of course. I run a lot of software that can
be
> resource intensive such as the Adobe CS3 Master Collection and the software
> involved there, and Video encoding software. I am also fairly active with
> VoIP and sometimes need to trascode audio codecs in real time with various
> Windows virtual PBX software (although I prefer Asterisk).      
I''m afraid you''re a little ahead of the curve. Running Windows
means full
virtualization, which means performance loss. While the situation is getting 
better with hard disk/block file drivers and net drivers (see PV drivers for 
HVM from James Harper, Halsign, and proprietary approachs to PV drivers from 
various distros), the console is what really still suffers.

While direct hardware access is possible with pciback (hiding the pci device 
from the dom0 and passing it to a guest) in *theory*, in practice, read this 
list (xen-users) for awhile. People are getting it to work for some cards, 
and not others. Even if you can get a video card to pass through to your 
guest, that means you need a 2nd video card for your dom0 (or at least it 
makes setting things up a lot easier). And that''s the situation for 
paravirtual (PV) guests. Support for passthrough for HVM is brand new and 
still being worked out in xen 3.2.x. Additionally (I believe) it requires 
Vt-d support to remap dma requests. Your processor may support intel vmx/Amd 
svm to get full virtuallization to work, but Vt-d is brand new. Even if you 
do have that hardware, better get your hacking shoes on!

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jim burns wrote:
> 
> I''m afraid you''re a little ahead of the curve.. .
.<br>
> Support for passthrough for HVM is brand new and still being worked out in
> xen 3.2.x. Additionally (I believe) it requires Vt-d support to remap dma
> requests. Your processor may support intel vmx/Amd svm to get full
> virtuallization to work, but Vt-d is brand new. Even if you do have that
> hardware, better get your hacking shoes on!
> 
This is exactly the information I was looking for. Based on your response I
guess that my answer would be "not yet" so to speak. I will hold off
on
trying this just yet, but I will watch Xen closely and wait with baited
breath for the day this might become possible. I have my doubts if it will
come to fruition though. Now that Cirtix is involved, my goal is quite a way
off from the Citrix push. Their website seems very geared towards server
consolidation and thin client services; as would be expected, that is were
the money is going to be.

I don''t know how much the open source end of things are steered by the
commercial side, but the situation I describe really would be the Holy
Grail. I see it as a way to prove this platform for VM as the undisputed
champion, and a way to rise above VMWare. If that were to happen the
commercial values would certainly follow.

I will stay registered to the list for a while, as I imagine that I can
learn quite a lot here - even if I am not ready to jump into the product
quite yet.

Thank you Jim. As stated earlier I will report this back to the other forum.
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