[GTALUG] VMware ESXi Licensing and Quality

[Jamon Camisso]

On 2017-10-16 02:49 PM, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> On 10/16/2017 02:37 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 03:23:50PM -0400, Clifford Ilkay via talk wrote:
>>> ESXi 6.5 runs on a Linux kernel. I have no idea if they've modified the
>>> kernel and if they have, if they contribute their changes to upstream as
>>> they are required to do under the terms of the GPL.
>> Actually it does not.  It uses some linux device drivers, but not a
>> linux kernel.
>>
> That's kind of interesting.
> Usually device drivers are intimately tied to the OS's design.
> What OS are they using?

ESXi and Xen are 'type 1' hypervisors, in that they are their own
operating system. Guests sit directly on top. VMs need to be patched to
make use of the hypervisor's ability to use virtualization related CPU
instructions.

KVM, VirtualBox, and Hyper-V (I think) are considered type 2. They run a
normal OS, and then provide an emulation layer for guest VMs. You can
run normal processes on the host OS, because it is just running an extra
set of processes to provide virtualization to guests. The guests don't
need to be modified at all, which is why it is easy to run any OS on a
type 2 hypervisor.

You'll also see the term VMM used interchangeably with hypervisor.

How the type of VMM relates to device drivers and licensing, I really
can't say.

Cheers, Jamon