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Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:00:38 -0700 From: Alok Kataria <akataria@...are.com> To: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com> Cc: Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@...hat.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>, Chris Wright <chrisw@...s-sol.org>, Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>, "virtualization@...ts.osdl.org" <virtualization@...ts.osdl.org>, Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org> Subject: Re: Paravirtualization on VMware's Platform [VMI]. On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 19:25 -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > On 09/28/2009 05:45 PM, Alok Kataria wrote: > > + bool "VMI Guest support [will be deprecated soon]" > > + default n > > This is incorrect use of the word "deprecated"... it's *already* > deprecated (a word which pretty much means the opposite of "recommended".) > > As far as "default n" is concerned... this is usually not necessary; "n" > is the default unless anything else is specified. How about this ? Thanks. -- Mark VMI for removal in feature-removal-schedule.txt. From: Alok N Kataria <akataria@...are.com> Add text in feature-removal.txt and also modify Kconfig to disable vmi by default. --- Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ arch/x86/Kconfig | 12 ++++++++--- 2 files changed, 39 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt index 89a47b5..d24c1af 100644 --- a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt +++ b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt @@ -451,3 +451,33 @@ Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. Who: Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org> + +---------------------------- + +What: Support for VMware's guest paravirtuliazation technique [VMI] will be + dropped. +When: 2.6.37 or earlier. +Why: With the recent innovations in CPU hardware acceleration technologies + from Intel and AMD, VMware ran a few experiments to compare these + techniques to guest paravirtualization technique on VMware's platform. + These hardware assisted virtualization techniques have outperformed the + performance benefits provided by VMI in most of the workloads. VMware + expects that these hardware features will be ubiquitous in a couple of + years, as a result, VMware has started a phased retirement of this + feature from the hypervisor. We will be removing this feature from the + Kernel too. Right now we are targeting 2.6.37 but can retire earlier if + technical reasons ( read opportunity to remove major chunk of pvops) + arise. + + Please note that VMI has always been an optimization and non-VMI kernels + still work fine on VMware's platform. + Latest versions of VMware's product which support VMI are, + Workstation 7.0 and VSphere 4.0 on ESX side, future maintainence + releases for these products will continue supporting VMI. + + For more details about VMI retirement take a look at this, + http://blogs.vmware.com/guestosguide/2009/09/vmi-retirement.html + +Who: Alok N Kataria <akataria@...are.com> + +---------------------------- diff --git a/arch/x86/Kconfig b/arch/x86/Kconfig index f777aaf..44c1660 100644 --- a/arch/x86/Kconfig +++ b/arch/x86/Kconfig @@ -496,14 +496,20 @@ if PARAVIRT_GUEST source "arch/x86/xen/Kconfig" config VMI - bool "VMI Guest support" - select PARAVIRT - depends on X86_32 + bool "VMI Guest support [deprecated]" + depends on X86_32 && PARAVIRT ---help--- VMI provides a paravirtualized interface to the VMware ESX server (it could be used by other hypervisors in theory too, but is not at the moment), by linking the kernel to a GPL-ed ROM module provided by the hypervisor. + As of September 2009, VMware has started a phased retirement of this + feature from VMware's products. Please see + feature-removal-schedule.txt for details. + If you are planning to enable this option, please note that you + cannot live migrate a VMI enabled VM to a future VMware product, + which doesn't support VMI. So if you expect your kernel to seamlessly + migrate to newer VMware products, keep this disabled. config KVM_CLOCK bool "KVM paravirtualized clock" -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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