[Gllug] Xen - bit of a ramble

[Andy Smith]

On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 11:45:44PM +0100, Matthew Cooke wrote:
> >Agree..  I was going to suggest to anyone with the ability to
> >implement this that it be possible to tell the real amount of
> >committed RAM from some file in /proc, if this isn't obvious from
> >"top".  But then I suppose someone would just come up with a patch
> >to disable this..  :)
> >
> >I see Xen as far more useful for enterprises to consolidate, and
> >this feature would be very useful there.
> >
> I read about server consolidation all the time in marketing literature but 
> I don't really understand why you would do this with low end hardware.

Agree again, I really wouldn't advocate that anyone put all their
eggs in one basket... but when I said "enterprise" I didn't really
mean "a business the size of google" as such, I was just using it to
mean anyone not in the business of selling virtual machines - a poor
choice of words I see now.

I saw the term "enterprisey" on a blog posting recently so maybe
that would have been a better choice of words, as Xen seems
enterprisey to me, letting even the little guy act like he has many
servers. ;)

As was already mentioned it's a lot easier to build things as a
cluster from the start if the individual nodes can be inexpensive
xen domains.  This can be good for building a test/development
cluster that mirrors a live environment that really is separate
hardware, or it can be a starting point with the virtual nodes being
replaced by physical nodes as load requires it.

Also sometimes even in massive businesses there are test,
development, etc. internal systems which may be short-lived yet
there is a need for there to be a lot of them, possibly different
operating systems or distributions.  Buying an individual
server for each one is a bit wasteful not only in terms of one off
purchase but also in terms of the infrastructure needed to keep them
all housed and running.  You could keep disk images around and tftp
boot them as and when required but it seems a lot less hassle to
have a few very big servers, adding more as needed.

Cheers,
Andy
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20060516/2350f852/attachment.pgp>
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug