View source for XL vs Xend Feature Comparison

The following compares the featureset of the [[XEND|xend]] toolstack vs the [[XL|xl]] toolstack as of Xen 4.2.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;" valign="top"
!style="width: 40%;"|
!style="width: 20%;"|[[XEND|xm / xend]]
!style="width: 20%;"|[[XL|xl]]
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>[[Xen Overview#Guest_Types|Guest Types]]</big>
|-
|PV guests
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|HVM guests
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>Guest lifecycle operations</big>
|-
|Create, shutdown, reboot
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Pause, unpause
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|List, rename
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Live migration and save/restore
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>Guest device support</big>
|-
|Network devices (both para-virtualised and emulated)
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Block devices (both para-virtualised and emulated)
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Sharing storage across DomU's via <code>w!</code> in virtual machines configuration files in disk settings
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot1|1]] ]</sup>
|-
|Virtual framebuffer, keyboard and mouse (both para-virtualised and emulated)
|{{Tick}} (includes SDL & VNC support)
|{{Tick}} (includes SDL, VNC & SPICE support)
|-
|SPICE framebuffer/console support
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|QXL graphics device support for SPICE
|{{NotDone}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot2|2]] ]</sup>
|-
|PV console devices
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|PCI device passthrough
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|VGA graphics device (GPU) passthrough
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|SCSI LUN/Host passthrough (PVSCSI)
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot2|2]] ]</sup>
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu xen traditional)
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu upstream)
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu xen traditional)
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot3|3]] ]</sup>
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu upstream)
|{{NotDone}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot3|3]] ]</sup>
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 1.1
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 2.0 (qemu upstream)
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 3.0 (qemu upstream)
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|PVUSB USB 2.0 device passthrough for both PV and HVM guests
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot3|3]] ]</sup>
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>Device Model Support</big>
|-
|Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Upstream Qemu Device Model
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Stub domain Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}  
|-
|Stub domain Upstream Qemu Device Model
|{{NotDone}}
|{{NotDone}}  <sup>[ [[#Foot2|2]] ]</sup>
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>&nbsp;</big>
|-
|CPU pools
|{{Tick}} (undocumented in [[XEND]] man pages)
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Cpupool-per-NUMA node. 
|{{NotDone}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Control of CPU scheduler parameters
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|TMEM 
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|XSM/Flash policy control
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}}
|-
|Control of CPUID features exposed to guests.
|{{Tick}}
|{{Tick}} (syntax greatly improved)
|-
!colspan="3"|<big>&nbsp;</big>
|-
|Managed Domains
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot1|1]] ]</sup>
|-
|Python code in configuration files
|{{Tick}}
|{{NotDone}} <sup>[ [[#Foot1|1]] ]</sup>
|}

<hr/>

<span id="Foot1"><sup>[ 1 ]</sup> Feature is explicitly not supported by xl, see [[XL#Anti-Features|XL Anti-Features]] </span><br/>
<span id="Foot2"><sup>[ 2 ]</sup> Feature will be exposed in a future release </span><br/>
<span id="Foot3"><sup>[ 3 ]</sup> Feature development has started in the Xen 4.5 release cycle, but did not get completed </span><br/>

'''Also See''':
* [[XL]]
* [[XEND]]
* [[Choice of Toolstacks]]
* Short video overview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdJi18VekEY&feature=youtu.be XM to XL: A Short, But Necessary, Journey]


[[Category:Xen]] [[Category:Xen 4.2]] [[Category:Users]]
[[Category:Xen 4.3]]
[[Category:Xen 4.4]]
[[Category:Xen 4.5]]
[[Category:Compatibility]]