Microsoft to discuss in the Linux kernel developers' mailing list a series of patches that enable the Hyper-V hypervisor to work with Linux root environments that have direct hardware access and are used to run guest systems (analogous to Dom0 in Xen). Until now, Hyper-V (Microsoft Hypervisor) only supported Linux in guest environments, but the hypervisor itself was managed from a Windows-based environment. Now, Microsoft intends to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Hyper-V.
The organization of the hypervisor's operation in the Linux and Windows kernels differs significantly; thus, an alternative approach is applied in the implementation of Hyper-V for Linux concerning subsystem configuration and hypercalls. The code for interrupt mapping using IOMMU has been reworked based on the similar code for Xen support in Linux (Xen and Hyper-V have and are based on the use of a privileged root/Dom0 environment for management).
The patches include the minimum necessary implementation for operation that is proposed as an initial prototype for discussion and critique. For hypervisor management, the device /dev/mshv is suggested, through which applications in user space can create and launch virtual machines. A port for a high-level hypervisor has also been proposed , allowing virtual machines to boot on top of Hyper-V instead of KVM.
In 2018, the number of guest systems with Linux in the Azure cloud service running on Windows-based environments is steadily decreasing, primarily due to the rising popularity of devops platforms and Kubernetes tied to Linux. Utilizing a unified stack based on Linux potentially simplifies maintenance and increases the performance of Hyper-V servers servicing guest systems with Linux.
Source: opennet.ru
