Xen HVM vs. KVM
Of course, if your machine supports virtualization in hardware, you might be inclined to wonder what the point of Xen is, rather than, say, KVM or lguest.
There are some excellent reasons to consider the idea. KVM and lguest are both easier to install and less invasive than Xen. They support strong virtualization with good performance.
However, KVM is, at the moment, less mature than Xen. It's not (yet) as fast, even with the kernel accelerator. Xen also supports paravirtualization, whereas KVM does not. Xen PV offers a handy way of migrating domUs and a good way of multiplexing virtual machines—that is, expanding to a two-level VM hierarchy. But honestly, we haven't got much experience with KVM, and we've got quite a lot with Xen. ...
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