XL vs Xend Feature Comparison
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The following compares the featureset of the xend toolstack vs the xl toolstack as of Xen 4.4 and 4.5.
| xm / xend | xl | |
|---|---|---|
| Guest Types | ||
| PV guests | ✓ | ✓ |
| HVM guests | ✓ | ✓ |
| PVHVM guests | ✓ | ✓ |
| PVH guests | ✗ | ✓ |
| Guest lifecycle operations | ||
| Create, shutdown, reboot | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pause, unpause | ✓ | ✓ |
| List, rename | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live migration and save/restore | ✓ | ✓ |
| Remus Integration | ✗ [ 4 ] | ✓ |
| Guest device support | ||
| Network devices (both para-virtualised and emulated) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Block devices (both para-virtualised and emulated) | ✓ | ✓ |
Sharing storage across DomU's via w! in virtual machines configuration files in disk settings
|
✓ | ✗ [ 1 ] |
| Virtual framebuffer, keyboard and mouse (both para-virtualised and emulated) | ✓ [ 6 ] | ✓ [ 6 ][ 7 ] |
| SPICE framebuffer/console support | ✗ | ✓ |
| QXL graphics device support for SPICE | ✗ | ✗ [ 2 ] |
| PV console devices | ✗ | ✓ |
| PCI device passthrough | ✓ | ✓ |
| VGA graphics device (GPU) passthrough | ✓ | ✓ |
| SCSI LUN/Host passthrough (PVSCSI) | ✓ | ✗ [ 2 ] |
| Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu xen traditional) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu upstream) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu xen traditional) | ✓ | ✗ [ 3 ] |
| Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu upstream) | ✗ | ✗ [ 3 ] |
| Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 1.1 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 2.0 (qemu upstream) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 3.0 (qemu upstream) | ✗ | ✓ |
| PVUSB USB 2.0 device passthrough for both PV and HVM guests | ✓ | ✗ [ 3 ] |
| Device Model Support | ||
| Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model | ✓ | ✓ |
| Upstream Qemu Device Model | ✗ | ✓ |
| Stub domain Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stub domain Upstream Qemu Device Model | ✗ | ✗ [ 2 ] |
| Misc Features | ||
| CPU pools | ✓ [ 5 ] | ✓ |
| Cpupool-per-NUMA node. | ✗ | ✓ |
| Control of CPU scheduler parameters | ✓ | ✓ |
| TMEM | ✓ | ✓ |
| XSM/Flash policy control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Control of CPUID features exposed to guests. | ✓ | ✓ (syntax greatly improved) |
| Features that are explicitly not supported in XL | ||
| Managed Domains | ✓ | ✗ [ 1 ] |
| Python code in configuration files | ✓ | ✗ [ 1 ] |
[ 1 ] Feature is explicitly not supported by xl, see XL Anti-Features
[ 2 ] Feature will be exposed in a future release
[ 3 ] Feature development has started in the Xen 4.5 release cycle, but did not get completed
[ 4 ] See Remus Toolkit Differences
[ 5 ] Undocumented in XEND man pages
[ 6 ] Includes SDL & VNC support
[ 7 ] Includes SPICE support
Also See:
- XL
- XEND
- Choice of Toolstacks
- Short video overview: XM to XL: A Short, But Necessary, Journey
- Remus Toolkit Differences
