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I am on to creating a new AMI image for CentOS 6.4. Until now I was on CentOS 5.6. I started with the CentOS market place image, and what I noticed is that it is running a regular kernel and not xen kernel, unlike my CentOS 5.6 image.

I am trying to answer following questions to my self. - Does EC2 need a xen-enabled kernel at all? Some of the AWS document I read says that run your own kernel using pvgrub. But my assumptions was that even if I boot using pvgrub, I need xen enabled kernel? - Does CentOS 6.4 kernel, kernel-2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64, is compiled with xen functionality? - Or pvgrub is doing some magic? I really doubt this, because as far as I understand pvgrub will boot the actual kernel image and handover control to main kernel?

Manish Sapariya
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I don't know if EC2 normally required a Xen kernel, but what I can tell you is that kernels from 2.6.32 include pv_ops, which makes them run on any virtualized environment.

Halfgaar
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  • Thanks I think that answers the question. http://www.slideshare.net/xen_com_mgr/the-sexy-world-of-linux-kernel-pvops-project The 4th slide in this presentation is precisely the answer. "Solves the early problem of classic Xen kernels: a distribution needed to ship two kernels: one for native, one for Xen.● Pvops extensions solved the problem - it allows the Linux kernel during runtime to figure out if it is running under any virtualization stacks (Xen, KVM) and swap over to using optimized low-level operations for the specific virtualization stack." – Manish Sapariya Jan 31 '14 at 08:30