[Xen-users] What are the advantages of running domU in a lvm logical volume?

[James Pifer <jep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've built my second xen server using SLES10SP1. I learned quite a bit
on the first server with help from this list. This second xen server is
going to be used for hosting mostly windows domU's. 

I've followed the instructions here:
http://ian.blenke.com/vmware/vmdk/xen/hvm/qemu/vmware_to_xen_hvm.html
I've successfully converted two vmware images to xen domU's. It worked
amazingly well!

I have three questions. 

1) The last part of instructions has you create a logical volume and dd
the disk image to it. Based on my experience with the first server, I
left a whole bunch of free space for doing this. 

But why do this? Why not just run the domU from the img file? I tested
it on the ones I did and it seems to run fine. Just wondering if there
are specific advantages for running from a logical volume. 


2) For a windows domU, if you restart dom0, is the domU shutdown
gracefully? I clicked shutdown from virt-manager and it looked like it
just "cut power". 


3) What is a realistic expectation for how many domU's can run on a
host? Obviously this is dependent on how they are being used, but if
dom0 has two dual core xeons at 2.6 GHZ and 16 GB of RAM, could you
conceivably run 5,6,or 7 windows servers with 2 GB of RAM each? (let's 
assume NOT high transaction servers)

As always, help is appreciated. 

Thanks,
James


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