[Chester LUG] Need some advice re: Xen

[Les Pritchard]

I've been using VMWare for several years now and have been really happy with
it.  One of the attractive things is that while the server product is free,
you can buy additional management tools or upgrade if things get too big.
As mentioned, another benefit is that it will run on most Linux distros or
Windows Servers (plus supports SMP for client systems).

I haven't really played much with Xen so I'm afraid I can't give any counter
argument!  But from what I hear it has improved vastly recently.

If you do go with Xen and find it a good solution - do let us know.

Les

On 1/10/07, George <george at goatadsl.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Stuart Burns wrote:
> > Hi Everyone
>
> > I looked at VMWare Enterprise but the price tag is a little too much.
> > Would this machine be suitable for a Xen setup via fedora ? These
> > servers all run one bespoke app that doesnt play nice with the rest.
> > You've heard the story many times I suspect. All the machines that I
> > want to run are Windows 2000 and upwards.
>
> I'd suggest using the free VMWare Server product. This should be fine
> for the number of machines you're wanting, plus should your needs ever
> expand to the enterprise product you can migrate the images.
>
> My understanding of Xen (possibly a little out of date) is that it
> requires modifications to the kernel of the operating system to work
> properly and obviously this is only practical on open source operating
> systems.
>
> > Whats a reasonable maximum guest os's to place on the machine. Can
> > anyone recommend a good setup guide for a linux newbie such as myself
>
> The main limitation will probably be disk space. VMWare does support
> only allocating the used part of the whole virtual disk you create but 6
> copies of operating systems etc. all adds up.
>
> If you're not used to using Linux you have the option of using Windows
> as the host with VMWare. Not that I'm discouraging using Linux but
> moving to hosting your entire infrastructure on it is a bit of a deep
> end for a learning experience :)
>
> If you do decide to use Linux using one of the supported distributions
> listed on the VMWare site will make things easier. This means that
> VMWare comes supplied with precompiled kernel modules for that
> distribution and (hopefully) these will be kept up to date in line with
> the released patches. If you use a non supported distribution (or update
> the kernel yourself) you need to remember to remake the modules after
> any kernel update or the virtual machines won't run.
>
> VMWare is doing a beta of their product to convert servers to virtual
> ones at the moment. There are also various free methods to do this -
> http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/316 - is one I'd seen
> but there are others. This isn't something I've tried to do though so I
> can't comment on which is best.
>
> George
>
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