Jakob Hirsch put forth on 3/16/2010 3:55 AM:
AFAICS, "generates many instances of the same data" does not apply to dovecot (or most other deamons).
You're misreading the meaning of the word "data" in this context. In this context "data" simply means memory page contents, not "program data structures" as in program variable contents (my_name = "Stan"). If you understood the previous paragraph in the doc, this should have been crystal clear.
VMs run as processes on top of the host Linux kernel+KVM. Thus, they are no different from a memory management standpoint than any other process. KSM wasn't specifically designed for memory consolidation of the contents of virtual machines. Again, they are regular Linux processes. Thus, KSM works on non VM processes exactly the same way.
Repeat after me: "A process is a process is a process."
-- Stan