Comments on: Red Hat looks under Linux's hood

Trying to take a more active role in open-source programming, Red Hat is expanding its R&D efforts on the operating system.

[JBorders_CNet]

Virtual goal is to run more efficiently? what?

>> All share the goal of making a server--and ultimately, a group of servers--run multiple jobs more efficiently. <<

I think Mr. Shankland needs to leave the description of what a Virtual machine does to the experts, he clearly has no business describing it himself.

A Virtual will ALWAYS be LESS efficient than running the native host operating system. The goal of a Virtual machine is NOT to run multiple jobs more efficiently (as Mr. Shankland would have you believe -- they will ALWAYS run LESS efficiently than a native host!) No, the goal of a Virutual machine is to allow flexibility, portability and reuse of machine configurations, along with the more efficient use of HARDWARE, since a single machine can now run several virtual machines, albeit in a LESS EFFICIENT manner.

I think Mr. Shankland does a disservice to those of us that understand and use Virtual machines on a daily basis. Perhaps he might quote an authority next time, rather than offering up his own, incorrect, assessment.

[Bill Dautrive]

Reading comprehension is your friiend

>> All share the goal of making a server--and ultimately, a group of servers--run multiple jobs more efficiently. <<

Read that again. And again, until you figure out that it is possible for one thing that will never match another to run more efficiently-RELATIVE TO ITSELF.

[Shankland]

Reporter responds: *overall* efficiency increases

I think we disagree on semantics, at least to an extent.

Indeed, a single application running on a virtual machine consumes more processor cycles than one running on bare hardware, although of course hardware support for virtualization in the form of Intel's VT and AMD's Pacifica will reduce that. But one of the main reasons so many companies in the computing industry are pushing virtualization, and the use of virtual machines specifically, is that you can wring more use out of a server running many different tasks.

The argument goes like this: Virtual machines increase the utilization of server hardware, and software to monitor the infrastructure will let administrators or automation software move virtual machines from one computer to another to deal with ups and downs in processing demands.

The upshot is that what took some number of servers in the past will take fewer of the same type of server in the future. Virtualization might cause an individual process to consume more computing cycles than it would otherwise, but overall, servers are being used more efficiently.