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OpenVMM – A New VMM for Windows and Linux, Written in Rust

by g0xA52A2A on 10/17/24, 5:42 AM with 118 comments

  • by robjwells on 10/17/24, 10:23 AM

    Note this “disclaimer” in the guide:

    > In recent years, development efforts in the OpenVMM project have primarily focused on OpenHCL (AKA: OpenVMM as a paravisor).

    > As a result, not a lot of "polish" has gone into making the experience of running OpenVMM in traditional host contexts particularly "pleasant".

    > This lack of polish manifests in several ways, including but not limited to: […]

    > • No API or feature-set stability guarantees whatsoever.

    https://github.com/microsoft/openvmm/blob/main/Guide/src/use...

  • by tonyedgecombe on 10/17/24, 10:01 AM

    In case anybody else wondered VMM = Virtual Machine Monitor.
  • by ericyd on 10/17/24, 1:05 PM

    Thank God this VMM is written in Rust, otherwise I would be very skeptical. I don't care about features or purpose or technical advantages, give me Rust or give me death.
  • by Vogtinator on 10/17/24, 1:26 PM

    Cargo.lock has 8750 lines. Is that normal for something like this?

    For comparison, QEMU basically just needs glibc, glib and zlib for basic functionality.

  • by zokier on 10/17/24, 10:20 AM

    How does this relate/compare to CloudHypervisor, another Rust based VMM that has been around for couple of years

    https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor

  • by rwmj on 10/17/24, 11:59 AM

    Slides from Linux Plumbers talk about OpenHCL: https://lpc.events/event/18/contributions/1956/attachments/1...
  • by efitz on 10/17/24, 3:13 PM

    Half the user guide is empty.

    I want to understand what communication channel(s) it has from guest to host. It's not clear from the cut-and-paste support described in the VNC section of the manual, how this works and what other functionality might be supported.

  • by AlfredBarnes on 10/17/24, 1:18 PM

    Rust was something i thought was a cute little language years ago, much like i thought python was. I didn't pay attention for like 2 years and it feels likes it's everywhere and everything.

    Time to learn.

  • by vrighter on 10/17/24, 1:32 PM

    it's written in rust is the only thing worth mentioning about it? congratulations on writing a thing that does something, i guess
  • by kosolam on 10/17/24, 9:17 AM

    A very interesting project. If I understand correctly it’s being used for Azure infrastructure.
  • by Dowwie on 10/17/24, 2:06 PM

    A New Virtual Machine Monitor for Windows and Linux that happens to be written in Rust
  • by hollerith on 10/17/24, 2:44 PM

    VMM == Virtual Machine Monitor, "such as Hyper-V, QEMU, VirtualBox".
  • by _0xdd on 10/17/24, 4:53 PM

    Nice! Would be pretty cool if this supported bhyve on FreeBSD.
  • by low_tech_love on 10/17/24, 9:40 AM

    [flagged]