Download Xen 3.0.3

Xen is a virtual machine hypervisor for the x86 platform and allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single system without dramatically impacting performance. If you want to know how the developers conceived and designed Xen, go to this page read the documentation. At the moment only Linux and *BSD are supported as operating systems, but other companies are busy supporting other operating systems such as Solaris. The developers released version 3.0.3 with the following announcement on the mailing list:

Version 3.0.3:

We’re pleased to announce the official release of xen 3.0.3! This release includes many new features as well as enhanced stability and performance. Some highlights include:

• a new easy-to-use CPU scheduler which includes weights, caps, and automatic SMP load-balancing;
• support for Xen-oprofile to allow measurement and optimization of code paths;
• greatly enhanced support for unmodified (“hvm”) guests including Windows and legacy Linux operating systems;
• support for dynamic-allocation and copy-on-write disks (“blktap/qcow”);
• packet segmentation offload in guests to improve network performance;
• enhanced support for IA64 (IPF) systems; and initial support for Power.

Cheers,
Ian (on behalf of the whole Xen dev team)

Version 3.0.2:

I’m pleased to announce the official release of xen 3.0.2! This release updates the bundled linux kernel version to 2.6.16, and makes xen a config option for i386/x86_64 builds rather than a separate top-level architecture. Support has been added for AMD’s new virtualization extensions, alongside the existing support for Intel VT. Oh, and we fixed a bunch of bugs along the way too!

Cheers,
Ian (on behalf of the whole Xen dev team)