> Hi all,
>
> After getting very enthosiast about Xen during the Xen
> tutorial at Linux Kongress in Hamburg, I think it is time to
> put Xen at work.
>
> I want to co-locate a server with several virtual machines
> running on it. Main OS will be Centos 4.2 and the guest will
> run some Linux distro.
> Later this year, another Windows-based VM may be added.
>
> So now I'm looking for a good server. The Tyan GX28 is my
> favourit up to now, mainly for the combination of specs and
> price. See <http://www.tyan.com/PRODUCTS/html/gx28b2881.html>
> and specs on
> <http://www.tyan.com/PRODUCTS/html/gx28b2881_spec.html>. In
> short, it is an 1U rack server with a Dual AMD Opteron(tm)
> system board with dual PGA 940-pin ZIF sockets and it has 4
> SATA HDD spaces.
>
> But, as the subject says, my question is about Pacifica
> support. For the Xen part, it is probably a matter of
> patience. But maybe someone here can tell me more about the
> following questions:
>
> 1) Are Pacifica AMD's going to be sold soon and will they fit
> on this board? The announcements about Pacifica-containing
> CPU's talk about 940-pin socketed CPU's.
I'm not sure what sockets will be supported by SVM (formerly Pacifica)
capable CPU's. I tried to find a publicly available roadmap that
mentioned SVM, but none available at the AMD web-site that I could find
in my first few attempts of googling/searching AMD site.
I think if you use Google, you'll find quite a few sites that mention
when we'll have new processors available, but it's not quite so easy to
know which ones are right... ;-)
>
> 2) Is AMD a good choice for a box with a number of
> server-like guests running on it or should I buy for example
> Intel Xeon (32 bit or 64 bit)?
I would say AMD, but then I'm biased... ;-) I also don't see ANY reason
to use a 32-bit OS on the new machines - you may want to run a VM in
32-bit for compatibility reasons, but no need to run a 32-bit hypervisor
or Dom0.
>
> 3) How realistic is it to expect a Windows guest (say, XP
> pro) running on a Linux Xen dom0 by Q3 of this year, provided
> that I buy the right hardware?
I would think that's quite feasible. Obviously, I'm predicting future
events here, and that's always harder than looking back to say "That's
how it went".
The next question is of course what sort of performance and stability.
There's certainly some low-hanging fruit when it comes to improving the
current performance of full virtualization over Xen, running any OS.
Whether any of those will be available by Q3 or not would be a different
matter.
Further, performance is very much dependant on the actual behaviour of
the application running in the OS. If you run something that is mostly
CPU intensive and not using IO (disk, graphics, network) the performance
should be nearly the same as the "baremetal" system's performance
[assuming ONE domU of course]. Running IO intensive applications would
probably be noticably slower, but there are benchmarks showing that Xen
is FASTER than the real hardware in some cases, so it's not quite
clearcut.
--
Mats
>
> I realize that these are difficult questions and maybe not
> entirely on-topic here. But I'm facing them right now and
> this is a place where smart guys hang out, isn't it?
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> Bas.
>
>
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>
>
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