XL vs Xend Feature Comparison

The following compares the featureset of the xend toolstack vs the xl toolstack as of Xen 4.4 and 4.5.

	xm / xend	xl
Guest Types
PV guests	✓	✓
HVM guests	✓	✓
PVHVM guests	✓	✓
PVH guests	✗	✓
Guest lifecycle operations
Create, shutdown, reboot	✓	✓
Pause, unpause	✓	✓
List, rename	✓	✓
Live migration and save/restore	✓	✓
Remus Integration	✗ [ 4 ]	✓
Guest device support
Network devices (both para-virtualised and emulated)	✓	✓
Block devices (both para-virtualised and emulated)	✓	✓
Sharing storage across DomU's via w! in virtual machines configuration files in disk settings	✓	✗ [ 1 ]
Virtual framebuffer, keyboard and mouse (both para-virtualised and emulated)	✓ [ 6 ]	✓ [ 6 ][ 7 ]
SPICE framebuffer/console support	✗	✓
QXL graphics device support for SPICE	✗	✗ [ 2 ]
PV console devices	✗	✓
PCI device passthrough	✓	✓
VGA graphics device (GPU) passthrough	✓	✓
SCSI LUN/Host passthrough (PVSCSI)	✓	✗ [ 2 ]
Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu xen traditional)	✓	✓
Qemu USB device passthrough via config file (using qemu upstream)	✗	✓
Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu xen traditional)	✓	✗ [ 3 ]
Qemu USB device passthrough via hotplug (using qemu upstream)	✗	✗ [ 3 ]
Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 1.1	✓	✓
Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 2.0 (qemu upstream)	✗	✓
Qemu USB device passthrough support for USB 3.0 (qemu upstream)	✗	✓
PVUSB USB 2.0 device passthrough for both PV and HVM guests	✓	✗ [ 3 ]
Device Model Support
Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model	✓	✓
Upstream Qemu Device Model	✗	✓
Stub domain Qemu Xen Traditional Device Model	✓	✓
Stub domain Upstream Qemu Device Model	✗	✗ [ 2 ]
Misc Features
CPU pools	✓ [ 5 ]	✓
Cpupool-per-NUMA node.	✗	✓
Control of CPU scheduler parameters	✓	✓
TMEM	✓	✓
XSM/Flash policy control	✓	✓
Control of CPUID features exposed to guests.	✓	✓ (syntax greatly improved)
Features that are explicitly not supported in XL
Managed Domains	✓	✗ [ 1 ]
Python code in configuration files	✓	✗ [ 1 ]

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^{[ 1 ]} Feature is explicitly not supported by xl, see XL Anti-Features
^{[ 2 ]} Feature will be exposed in a future release
^{[ 3 ]} Feature development has started in the Xen 4.5 release cycle, but did not get completed
^{[ 4 ]} See Remus Toolkit Differences
^{[ 5 ]} Undocumented in XEND man pages
^{[ 6 ]} Includes SDL & VNC support
^{[ 7 ]} Includes SPICE support

Also See:

• XL
• XEND
• Choice of Toolstacks
• Short video overview: XM to XL: A Short, But Necessary, Journey
• Remus Toolkit Differences