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Xen hypervisor

DataSheet Proposal for Xen 3.3 Hypervisor Published

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Stephen Spector published a post yesterday on the Xen blog featuring a proposed data sheet (PDF) for the upcoming Xen 3.3 release, which we said was in final testing stage in the beginning of this month.

Update 26 August: Xen 3.3.0 is available for download.

The complete list of new features in Xen 3.3 includes:

Performance and Scalability

  • CPUID Levelling
  • Shadow 3 Page Table Optimizations
  • EPT/NPT 2MB Page Support
  • Virtual Framebuffer Support for HVM Guests
  • PVSCSI — SCSI Support for PV Guests
  • Full 16-bit Emulation on Intel VT
  • Support for memory overcommit allowing more VMs per physical machine for some workloads

Security

  • PVGRUB Secure Replacement for PYGRUB
  • IO Emulation “stub domains” for HVM IO
  • Green Computing
  • Enhanced C & P State Power Management
  • Graphics Support
  • VT-d Device Pass-Through Support

Miscellaneous

  • Upgrade QEMU Version
  • Multi-Queue Support for Modern NICs
  • Removal of Domain Lock for PV Guests
  • Message Signalled Interrupts
  • Greatly improved precision for time-sensitive SMP VMs
XenSource

Invisible Things Lab: Hypervisors Mucho Hackable

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Security researchers from Invisible Things Lab claim will be demonstrating how easy it is to hack hypervisors at the next Black Hat conference in Las Vegas in August. More specifically, they’ll be discussing the (in)security of the Xen hypervisor, such as how to plant rootkits, how to bypass various hypervisor anti-subverting techniques, as well as how “Bluepills” (ah, that rang a bell) can be used in bare-metal hypervisor compromises. They plan on releasing proof-of-concept code.

From the Invisible Things blog:

The three presentations have been designed in such a way that they complement each other and create one bigger entirety, thus they can be referred as “Xen 0wning Trilogy” for brevity.

The three presentations that are mentioned, are the following:

  1. Subverting the Xen hypervisor
  2. Detecting and Preventing the Xen hypervisor subversions
  3. Bluepilling the Xen hypervisor

Should be interesting!

On a sidenote, this caveat in the Invisible Things Lab blog post is an interesting statement on its own:

It’s worth noting that we chose Xen as the target not because we think it’s insecure and worthless. On the contrary, we believe Xen is the most secure bare-metal hypervisor out there (especially with all the goodies in the upcoming Xen 3.3). Still we believe that it needs some improvements when it comes to security. We hope that our presentations will help making Xen (and similar hypervisors) more secure.

Do you agree?

[Source: Information Week]

SourceLabs Adds Support For Xen In Self-Support Suite

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SourceLabs, provider of technology to support open source software, today announced that its Self-Support Suite now supports the Xen hypervisor.

SourceLabs’ Self-Support technology aims to give developers, corporate IT pros and solution
providers an on-demand way to reduce the complexity of application development, deployment, troubleshooting and software maintenance for open source technologies.

“As data centers are moving toward a more dynamic model, they are increasingly doing so using server virtualization technology and Xen is the leading technology solution in the market today for running virtualized IT environments,” said Byron Sebastian, SourceLabs CEO and Founder. “The SourceLabs Self- Support Suite gives developers the ability to significantly drive down the costs of deploying and maintaining virtualized data centers with technology that seamlessly and effortlessly harnesses the power of Xen and other open source technologies.”

SourceLabs’ Self-Support Suite identifies issues and ranks potential resolutions from across a wide variety of projects in the open source development ecosystem. Indexing, managing, and storing the data, SourceLabs uses advanced pattern matching and predictive analysis algorithms to automate troubleshooting, reduces the time on routine tasks and analyzes data to flag any potential problems before they can impact systems or designs.

SourceLabs’ supports all current and previous releases of Xen technology, including auxiliary projects
such as ‘libvirt.’ SourceLabs’ Self-Support Suite for Xen references solutions from Xen.org as well as
solutions from across multiple Linux distributions that ship with Xen integration including Debian,
RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenSuSE, as well as the Linux Kernel mailing list and bug database,
providing Xen users an exhaustive resource for troubleshooting and analysis of their virtualization
platforms. SourceLabs’ Self-Support Suite supports the most popular open source Java and Linux
technologies including Apache httpd, GCC, MySQL, Sendmail, and the Linux Kernel among others.

Basic support includes 24×7 global coverage and is available from $399 for one developer seat.

Release: CentOS 5.2, Free Red Hat Enterprise Linux Clone

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The CentOS development team has released CentOS 5.2, which is based on and promises full compatibility for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2. Available for i386 and x86-64 architectures, the release offers new drivers and bug fixes, as well as improvements to the Xen virtualization kernel, according to the team.

The fresh clone comes with updated software support for Apache, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Also, you won’t be paying the $350-$2,500 per year subscription fee for RHEL 5.2!

Documentation can be found here, release notes here, download mirrors here.

[Source: The Register]