[Wolves] Xen

Andy Smith andy at lug.org.uk
Thu Jan 11 12:40:48 GMT 2007


On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 12:25:28PM +0000, Adam Sweet wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> Is anyone using Xen?

Yes, rather a lot (see signature) :)

> Would you recommend any one distro over another at
> the moment? I know SuSE have been shipping it for a while, Fedora are
> shipping a stable copy in FC6 and Ubuntu aren't shipping it with
> official support. I'm not sure which to plump for, I'd prefer not to use
> SuSE for the sake of adding another distro that does things in different
> ways to FC and Debian/Ubuntu and my moral objection to their Microsoft deal.

Fedora's support is probably the easiest to get along with but
personally I stick with Debian because I know Debian best.  If
Fedora is something you're comfortable with then probably that is
the way to go, but it's possible on any distro as long as you're
comfortable compiling kernels.

> While we are on the subject, does anyone have thoughts on KVM, lhype, or
> how Xen compares to VMWare for long-term use?

Out of all the above it will be ease of use and manageability that
will be the key, I believe.  Xen has problems integrating with the
main Linux kernel (as in, it's not part of the kernel tree and
won't be anytime soon), whereas lhype (now know as LL) is already in and
is getting more features every day.  It may well catch up soon but
right now it is a definite work in progress and not something you
could base a production service on.

> It seems that Xen is as yet still young and VMWare could pull
> their free products at any in the future that they choose leaving
> you to pay up, stick with what you have forever or painfully
> migrate.

VMWare is very nice if you can afford it.  It is currently far too
expensive to use for hosting purposes, and I imagine it will stay
that way.  For personal use it's great but I think that they will
keep things as they are purely to maintain a level of interest.

KVM looks pretty good as long as you have the VT extensions, but
it's still quite slow, without much amnagement tools,  and so not so
useful for hosting.  Still good for personal use and for testing
things though.

You may find http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison
interesting.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
http://strugglers.net/wiki/Xen_hosting -- A Xen VPS hosting hobby
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
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